Rathlyn, Havilland rattled by earthquakes

Posted on Sunday, 17 March 2013 in Disaster, Hobson

Rathlyn, HB, Mar 17 – Rathlyn, Havilland and the Auckland dependencies have been jolted out of their quiet St. Patrick’s Day afternoon with a pair of earthquakes striking just over an hour ago.

The Auckland provinces were shaken by a magnitude 3.1 quake centred 65km northeast of the city at 4:01pm, followed at 4:05pm by another registering magnitude 3.9 centred just 17km northeast of Rathlyn.

The shaking was felt across Auckland from Waiheke Island to Rodney, an area that includes the provinces of Hobson and Wellesley and the Blacksands and Watchman Island dependencies.

There are no reports of damage or injury.

Premier Daniel Anderson was in Rathlyn when the quakes struck.

“I was on my bed watching Ted of all things when I realised I could feel the bed moving” he said a short time ago. “So I got up to make sure I wasn’t imagining it, and sure enough I could feel the floor moving ever so gently underneath me.”

He joked that “my room is an utter tip, but it was like that before the quakes.”

It has been noted that it was a somewhat peculiar way for the 2013 Micronational Games to finish. The Games end tonight in Rathlyn with results expected to arrive within the next few days for tabulation.

The quakes are the largest to have struck Auckland in several years. Despite lying on an active faultline, earthquakes larger than magnitude 2 are fairly rare.