On March 17th, we were treated to a personal account of the great New Zealand (Christchurch) earthquake by Dr Richard Hamblin, lately of BGS (British Geological Survey), who took a busman’s holiday to see the geology of that far away country. As luck would have it whilst there, the great earthquake occurred, so Richard was not only superbly qualified to give us a quick outline of the geology of this complex region, but also to tell a gripping tale of what actually happens if you are there, right there, almost at the epicentre, and again apply his professional interpretation to scenes few ever see. I most certainly will not try to precis his talk here, but am able to attach a number of the pictures shown in the course of an entertaining and educational evening enjoyed by over 50 at Martley Memorial Hall.
Latterly a rather unusual coincidence occurred that led me to believe, fleetingly, that perhaps I was the only one NOT at Christchurch that day, and we hope this incident will be of future benefit to the Society too.
Read on.
With another hat on, I am part of a voluntary group that installs broadband services in the area (Martley Web Mesh). Recently I was chatting to the lady of the house where we were working and she said she had a son in NZ, to which I remarked that we had recently listened to a very interesting talk on the earthquake, made very much more real, as our speaker was actually there at the time. ‘So was I’ she said, ‘My son lives in Lyttleton, (a suburb of Christchurch and much closer to the epicentre than the centre of Christchurch itself) and I was on holiday there! Best of all her other son is a doctor of geology, qualified at Durham and apparently is quite well known as a speaker, so I have passed his name on to Janet.
I just love this networking thing.