The Ring of Fire

After 2 weeks the painter has finally finished the job. The colour I picked looks quite all right, when you’re standing close to the house, the view from the street is a bit disappointing, but well...

While the painter was here we had plenty of chats during his breaks. Of course, the main topics were the CHCH earthquake, the 20 March earthquake prediction for CHCH, and then since Friday the cataclysm in Japan. ‘Our’ earthquake has been completely dwarfed by the unfortunate events over there. The death toll of appr. 200 is nothing compared to the amount of casualties in Japan. Looking at the Fukushima footage gives me the creeps. In 1996 I spent some time there on a strawberry farm. I had no clue there was a nuclear plant in the vicinity. Also, back then I had never heard of the ‘Ring of Fire’, which is going right through Japan and New Zealand.

Assessing our position in Raumati in terms of safety we concluded that the hill between the ocean and our house will never hold in case of a powerful tsunami. But what are the chances of this happening here? I think we don’t have anything to worry about. We also realised that, within this context, Europe and Afrika are probably the safest continents in the world.

On Wikipedia I found this clear image of the Ring of Fire, with New Zealand sitting in the long toes of the ‘left foot’ :





Which country will be next????