Green RIG whereabouts

Many of you will know that the award winning Green RIG spends its time on the road educating our communities about environmental issues. In the recent theme change natural hazards have become more of a talking point. One wall of the Green RIG is dedicated to natural hazards.

The photo shows students learning about the effects of development in flood plains... something we know a little bit about.

The Green RIG team publish a calendar on the Green RIG website here. Over the next couple of months, the Green RIG will be in Palmerston North, Carterton and Wanganui.

Liquefaction... what does it mean for us?

Since the Canterbury earthquake, we have been fielding a few calls about liquefaction in our region. There have been a few good articles in local papers, but here is a small excerpt from our Risk and Responsibilities Report (the lifelines report).

'Liquefaction is the loss of strength of unconsolidated materials during shaking, with the expulsion of water. Heavy objects such as tanks may sink, list, or float if liquefaction of their foundation or surrounding materials occurs. Sandy layers, up to several metres below the ground may liquefy provided there is sufficient confining pressure, and may cause sand/water fountaining at the ground surface. Liquefaction is commonly responsible for lateral spreading along riverbanks. Unconsolidated, water saturated sandy material is a prerequisite for liquefaction, so areas prone to this hazard tend to coincide with those prone to amplification of shaking and settlement.'

In our region, it is the west coast strip that is most susceptible to liquefaction. The diagram also shows known earthquake faults.

Get Ready Week... underway already

OK, so we're a bit early... that's typical of us though!

This year's theme for Get Ready Week (formerly known as Disaster Awareness Week) is tsunami. That fits nicely with the national tsunami exercise on the 20th October. New banners have been made for our AirShelter and a CDEM Group tsunami brochure prepared and printed. We've bought survival items to display in the AirShelter and have the new video interviews with Kiwis who survived the Samoa earthquake and tsunami last year.

Next thing you know, Canterbury have a massive earthquake and a significant civil defence response. Closer to home, we have more than our fair share of rain resulting in evacuations, flood gate operations and an awful lot of soggy ground! We've now operated the new Makino and Moutoa flood control gates twice in two weeks. I think its a good guess that people will have questions about earthquakes and floods while we are out there in the community.

To help answer some of the questions, we dusted off the earthquake cubes from a couple of years ago. Each cube in the display (numbered 4-8) represents the amount of energy released in an earthquake. The very small cube represents a Richter scale 4 event and the big cube a Richter scale 8. We'll also be printing off some more Makino brochures for the Fielding display.

The Get Ready Week roadshow is in the following places...

5-7 October Levin at Horowhenua District Council

8 October Feilding in the Square

11 October Taihape New World

12 October Marton New World and Ohakune District Council Service Centre

13 October Palmerston North in the Square

14 October Danevirke at the Warehouse

15 October Wanganui as part of the Health Wellbeing and Fitness expo at the Memorial Hall