New Zealand's Earthquakes

Our group searched New Zealand’s geography. New Zealand is on the circum-Pacific volcano belt so there are a lot of dangerous of volcanic activity, earthquake and so on. I am going to talk about earthquake of them.

There are many earthquakes in New Zealand like Japan. New Zealand has two plates, Australia plate and Pacific plate. Pacific plate is in Japan too. The two plates are always moving each other. When they shed and shake other, an earthquake happen. They say there are more than 150 active faults in New Zealand, and the length of the biggest of these is 650 km. Earthquakes happened magnitude6 class at least once every year, magnitude7 class once in decade in New Zealand. The biggest earthquake of New Zealand happened in Napier on 3 February in 1931, and at least 256(161 in Napier, 93 in Hastings, 2 in Wairoa) people died in the magnitude 7.8 earthquake. The memorial of the earthquake was built.

The capital of New Zealand is Wellington, and it is on earthquake frequency belt. Wellington is the most dangerous place in New Zealand, but there is organization for search earthquake and lot of earthquake stations all over New Zealand. The earthquake stations always working to guard people live in there. It is also important that you guard yourself. That geothermal activity causes earthquakes and volcanic activity, but it creates grate things like hot spring and beautiful landform and so on. It also helps produce heat for electricity and heating.