Free internet at Palm Sprinsg airport. Tues they added a talk by (Mark Stirling...too lazy to check things here at airport...) on the Christchurch New Zealand earthquake of less than 2 weeks ago. It was M7 or 7.2 on a previously unknown fault that has not failed in at least 16,000 years, because it does not offset (until now) a geomorphic surface (terrace) of that age. The earthquake hazard from local faults in Christchurch was relatively low and they were mainly concerned about very larhe quakes from the much more distant Alpine fault.

Vertical ground motions reached more than 1 g (force of gravity) near the part of fault that broke.

And, no fatalities: compare to Haiti.

I'll be curious whether they use acoustic data (seismic reflection) to see if the fault offsets sediments/rocks that are 100,000 or 1 million years, or if it is a new fault, or what.

Lots of good earth scientists in New Zealand...especially for 4 million population, so they will get this figured out...especially since fault strike points straight into Christchurch.

Chris