A strong magnitude 5.3 earthquake shook Taranaki awake at 2.57am on Saturday, knocking pictures and pot plants off walls and shelves near the epicentre and rattling people as far away as Waihi and Auckland’s North Shore.
The quake was centred 25 kilometres east of New Plymouth at a depth of about 11 kilometres, according to GeoNet, which rated the shaking as strong. By Saturday evening 7,334 people had filed felt reports. Most described light to moderate shaking, but about 1,000 reported strong shaking and 105 reported shaking at the levels GeoNet classes as damaging.
That makes it the largest shallow earthquake recorded within 50 kilometres of its epicentre since at least 1940, based on a search of GeoNet’s earthquake catalogue. The previous largest shallow quake in that area was a magnitude 5.0, 35 kilometres north-east of Stratford, in October 1982. The next largest were a magnitude 4.7 east of Stratford in 1989 and another 4.7 off the coast north of New Plymouth in 2003. Taranaki gets larger quakes than Saturday’s more often, but most come from 200 kilometres or more underground, where the Pacific plate dives beneath the North Island. At those depths the shaking is much weaker by the time it reaches the surface.
Fire and Emergency New Zealand said it received no callouts related to the tremor, RNZ reported. No injuries or structural damage had been reported by Saturday evening.
People living closest to the epicentre had the biggest fright. A resident of Kaimata, a rural district east of New Plymouth near where the quake struck, told RNZ that “pictures and pot plants fell and smashed”. In central New Plymouth, a listener named Richard said, “Haven’t felt one like that for a long time. Was getting ready to drop, cover and hold.”
Another New Plymouth resident, Rob, told RNZ the quake was “a huge shock” and described “a few big thumps (loud bangs, complaints from the building)”. Further afield, listeners in Golden Bay felt “light shaking” and “a gentle sway”. In Raetihi, near Ruapehu, a listener named Tina said she was glad she had received an alert on her phone before the shaking began.
On social media, people described being jolted out of bed by a loud rumble followed by sharp shaking. One person quoted by 1News said it “felt like something picked me up and shook the living crap out of me! Lots of stuff fell down.” The New Zealand Herald reported that a 78-year-old called it “the worst I ever felt in my 78 years”.
With Mount Taranaki looming over the region, many people’s first question was whether the volcano was involved. Earth Sciences New Zealand seismic duty officer Elisabetta D’Anastasio told the Herald it was not. “The event of last night was located far to the east of the volcano in an area with no clear link to the volcanic activity at Taranaki Maunga,” she said. She added that Taranaki is an active region where earthquakes can be either tectonic or linked to volcanic processes.
GeoNet’s volcanic alert level for Mount Taranaki remained at zero on Saturday, which means no volcanic unrest. The mountain last erupted around 1790 and is considered dormant rather than extinct.
A small run of aftershocks followed. GeoNet recorded a magnitude 3.2 quake 20 kilometres north of Stratford less than two minutes after the main shock, at 2.59am. Smaller quakes of magnitude 1.8 to 2.4 followed through the rest of the night and Saturday morning. Aftershocks are normal after a quake of this size, and more small ones are likely over the coming days and weeks. The chance of a larger quake is low but not zero.
Saturday’s quake is the second notable shake for Taranaki in a month. On 6 September a magnitude 4.2 quake about 15 kilometres north of Εpunake was felt by about 2,000 people, with GeoNet rating that shaking as light. The two quakes were roughly 50 kilometres apart, and nothing suggests they are connected.
The early hour may have helped. Most people were in bed rather than on the road or under shelving in shops, and the reports of breakages were limited to household items. But the experience was a sharp reminder that the region is not as quiet as many people assume. Taranaki sits well away from the Alpine Fault and the Hikurangi subduction zone that dominate earthquake risk planning, yet it has its own faults and a steady trickle of shallow quakes across the ring plain around the mountain.
Civil Defence advice after any strong quake is to check your home for damage, including chimneys, water heaters and gas fittings, and to be ready for aftershocks. If shaking starts, the advice is to drop to the ground, take cover under a sturdy table and hold on until it stops. Anyone who felt Saturday’s quake can still add a felt report through the GeoNet website or app, which helps scientists map how the shaking spread.
To see how seismic waves travel outward from a quake’s centre and why shaking arrives in stages, try our earthquake propagation tool.
Did you feel the Taranaki earthquake, and how did it compare with others you have felt? Tell us where you were and what happened in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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