What caused the new zealand earthquake 2011?

Answer 1

New Zealand sits on two tectonic plates and when they moved the actions of the movent spreads seismic waves and they rippled accross the land from the epicentre (the start point of the earthquake)

Answer 2

New Zealand lies astride the boundary between two tectonic plates, the Pacific and the Australian. The Pacific Plate subducts under the Australian in the North and in the far south the Australian subducts very steeply beneath the Pacific.

In between, the plates tend to lock, and breakages of this lock cause both earthquakes and other faults to develop. It was upon one of these secondary faults that the several Christchurch earthquakes were generated. There were several hundred earthquakes of magnitude 3+ in the series, and a handful of ones of 5+.

The depth of the quakes was quite shallow, and peak accelerations of >2g were recorded! This is exceptional. [It is not practical to design buildings to withstand accelerations of greater than 1g, for at greater than 1g, the structure will leap into the air!]

Much of Christchurch lies on unconsolidated old riverbed and alluvium. Attention to this had previously been drawn by the Regional Authority. De-watering of these silts produced 'sand volcanoes' measured in the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of silt.

There is good information on wikipedia, and on the website for gns.cri.nz.

Answer 3

The earthquake happened because of the collision of two destructive plates in New Zealand.

Answer 4

In NZ Dollar terms, about 15 billion dollars or so.

Answer 5

because we are in a collision zone where the edges of two plates meet. There is a fault line going through New Zealand which this country is part of a huge volcanic and earthquake activity.

Answer 6

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