17Mar2005

You know how they talk about Wellington getting the “Big One”. I always thought they were referring to winning the Ranfurly Shield or Super 12. Apparently not. They’re referring to an earthquake. The experts tell us its only a matter of time. The “Big One” is not winning the Ranfurly Shield or Super 12. These are two events which will certainly never happen.

I was in Wellington last Monday when I was jolted awake by an earthquake. Normally I sleep through them. Supine as I was I had no chance of getting up to shelter in a doorway or under a table for that matter. Because Wellington has a propensity for earthquakes I have a host of friends there who every night roll their beds under doorways or tables just waiting. So as I lay there gently rocking, the doors slamming, windows rattling and the house creaking I began to wonder whether this was the “Big One”. I was in Khandallah and it’s right on the fault line. I had visions of gently sliding towards the Ngauranga Gorge. Perhaps I’d end up in L.V. Martin’s Home Appliance Showroom which is situated there. That would be fortuitous. I remembered that they were having a sale at the moment. I wondered where my credit cards were. I was obviously ill prepared. Within thirty seconds or so the whole lot of shaking that had been going on stopped. I flicked the bedside light. It came on. I looked out the window and high on Mt Kaukau on the television tower the little red lights were, as always endlessly chasing one another up and down. The power was obviously on all round. This was not the “Big One”. I could forget about slipping slowly down the hill to L.V. Martin & Son. It didn’t’ matter where my credit cards were. All around that leafy tui and kingfisher infested suburb which is Khandallah I could see the lights coming on as hundreds of relieved residents climbed out of their beds from under tables and doorways and with the bottled water that they always kept handy for such an emergency made themselves a nice cup of tea. I lay there and calculated that the shake would have been somewhere between 5.8 and 6.4 according to Dr Richter’s Scale. It was in fact 6.1. How did Charles Richter, whom I believe is no longer with us, calculate the strength of an earthquake. Some say he arrived at his scale of measurement from the logarithm of the amplitudes of the waves recorded by the seismograph (phew). Others say he arrived at his theory by counting the number of jars of preserves that fell off pantry shelves. Or how many bottles of wine were dislodged from wine racks. Or indeed chimneys cracked. I prefer the preserves and cracked chimney theory to the logarithm one. Its a lot easier to understand.

As I slipped back to sleep I began thinking about the tremendous force an earthquake generates. If you could harness this force then we would have had no need for the electricity reforms Max Bradford initiated a few years. Do you remember Max Bradford? Who could forget him. Urbane and handsome. Greying at the temples. Single handedly he generated a quake which registered about 9 on the Richter scale with his electricity reforms. We’re still feeling the after shocks. So the news this week that we were about to endure another ten percent power increase in power charges my mind turned to Max. These constant shocks of power price increases are very similar to earthquakes. To quote one resident who was in fact speaking of earthquakes “You don’t know what you’re going to get and you don’t know when they’re going to strike. And the only way to counter them is to have plenty of candles on hand and a serious supply of water”. When I come to think of it is not bad advice to counter the power price increases. Candles and water. I wonder where Max Bradford is now. The next power quake of his due in a month or so. I bet he is already sheltering under a table or a doorway somewhere in Mt Victoria or Oriental Bay.