Quake rattles bottom of South Island

A 5.6 magnitude earthquake 40km north of Te Anau was felt across the bottom of the South Island this morning.

The quake, which was originally recorded as being magnitude 5.2, hit at 10.52am, at a depth of 67km and caused moderate shaking, GeoNet says.

A Queenstown resident told the Otago Daily Times it caused a little bit of a rumble in the town and she could see curtains and a lampshade shaking back and forth.

Another Queenstown resident who was at Countdown when it hit said shelves were shaking back and forth.

Te Anau resident Chris Hughes said he and his pets did not feel a thing but his flatmates did.

"I was talking to my daughter on the phone in Wanaka and she felt it quite sharply over there, and all my flatmates did but I didn't. I didn't actually notice it."

The only clue he had was that some items were swaying.

"I thought there had been something but it didn't really rattle our place too much."

He said he had noticed on Facebook people had felt the quake.

"It might just be site-specific, depending what your house is built on."

A community social media page was active with people commenting about what they felt. One person said they thought it was a truck going past with how the windows rattled, while another said they could hear it before the shaking started. 

On the GeoNet website people reported feeling the quake across the bottom of the South Island, including in Dunedin and Invercargill.

It comes after the area was shaken by a magnitude 5.0 quake on Saturday April 18.

According to monitoring site Geonet, the quake struck just before 8pm with an epicentre 40km north-west of Te Anau, at a depth of 56km

There were reports of a 'good shake' in Queenstown and Invercargill but no reports of damage.

 

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