Call me Martini, I was stirred, not shaken, by the Seattle earthquake.

"Ring of Fire" is a journalists' term which the geologists have grabbed with both hands - something has to make plate tectonics sexy. Interestingly, I was taught Wegener's theory of plate tectonics in geography at school as fact, and it was only comparatively recently that I learned that it had not been accepted by everyone at the time.

Jackie posited that New Zealand was "islands of solidity". Nope. The fault line runs through the middle of the house. As Musick stated, my office straddles the main fault, the equivalent, and just as active, of the San Andreas fault on the eastern side of the PacRim. My house sits high above and slightly, only slightly, back from the same fault plus an active subsidiary fault. We get at least ten noticeable earthquakes a year.

When the "big one" comes, as we are promised, most of Hutt City will disappear below the surface of the ground through liquefaction - alluvial deposits will become as liquid as water, and Hutt City is built on a flood plain. My only consolation is that the vulcanologists and seismologists have recently faithfully promised that when that happens, all of the dormant volcanoes on which Auckland is built will blow their stacks and replace the whole city with a nice, fresh, steaming lava field.


The idiot also known as Capfka ...