Twelve hours of sustained earthquakes rattle central New Zealand. What damage have you observed?

One would hope that all buildings are thoroughly checked before allowing workers back into them. Suspect very few people wiill want to head to work in the CBD for the next few days!

Staying in Wellingon on the twenty first floor; view from a basement room all of a sudden became more appealing. Quickly decided aftershocks would continue throughout the night and would mean lack of good sleep. I usually take 10 minutes to pack but did it in two minutes; but most amazingly, wife who usually takes 20 minutes more than me was packed and gone within a minute. Back in the Hawkes Bay by 9.30pm.

Nothing wrong with the house (Aotea) or the office (Parliament end of town) but I arrived at work this morning to find the coffee machine is out of order. Now this is a DISASTER.

Your reporters have just interviewed Delia Dytha-Rownd, Most Excellent Leader of the Wellywood Collective, about her response to the series of quakes which have shaken the capital and revived memories of both the Christchurch quakes of 2010-2012, and of the historical series of damaging Wellywood quakes (1848, 1855, 1934, 1942).

Delia was dressed exquisitely, as always, in a linen dirndl and woven flax sandals.

We asked her firstly about the immediate quake response.

'Well', she said, 'I'm not at all happy. The near-total cancellation of public transport means that no-one who votes for me can actually get around.  And the preponderance of elderly white males with positions in the Civil Defence Service and indeed within my own Collective, to judge by interviews on the National Steam Radio, is definitely something we shall have to work on in the very near future'.

We respectfully suggested that as Her Excellency had been out of the vicinity, these were the only people available to talk to. 

'Oh', she snapped,' that's nonsense.  I always maintain a coconut-shell with natural animal skin speaking membrane and toi-toi-twine communication system with me on my travels, and it would have been perfectly simple for you to pick up the shell at Your end, and talk!'

We deferred to Her Munificency on this matter, as in point of fact one of our younger staffers had, thanks to the ban on synthetic canniboids, used the shell as a bong, lit the toi-toi and smoked the lot - rendering the communications device, as they say, off-twine.

'What', we asked, 'do you make of the fact that these quakes originated on the sea-bed between the two main islands?'

This question appeared to startle Delia, who lapsed into a prolonged reverie before replying.

'This is much worst than I'd feared', she eventually mused. 'I'd thought it was just Gaia, reminding us that rampant consumerism and neglect of the land-based ecosystems we inhabit, has consequences.'

'But now Tangaroa is evidently involved, I'm not so sure we haven't gotten ourselves a Grand Conjunction.'

'It may be that the usual offerings of land-based indulgences - sacrificing some farmers during their Final Consent hearings, bankrupting a few commercial enterprises with rates, fees and inspections, and so on - the usual suspects, is no longer nearly enough.'

'We shall have to consider, and quickly, an offering to the sea-gods as well'.

Your intrepid reporters, somewhat aghast at this revelation, ventured to query just what this further 'offering' could possibly consist of.

Delia, after a further mini-trance session, then delivered the following edict.

"We will forthwith gather the entire New Zealand oil and gas fleet of exploration and production ships, in the sacred womb of Wellywood Harbour.

 

We will load onto these ships, a selection of the purest and youngest specimens of all non-indigenous species of fauna, in these fair lands.

 

We will crew these ships with virgins, male and female, from the Great City of WellyWood.

 

The ships will be sailed to the middle of the Strait, and scuttled.

 

The sacrifice will thus atone for our temerity in using the Sea, to drill holes in Gaia's sacred skin - the crust or mantle of our fair Middle-Earth.

Thus do we propose to mitigate our effects on the earth, appease the Gods of Sea, Earth and Sky, and hopefully get a decent night's sleep."

Our reporters, with open mouths but ever-active minds, then asked the obvious and final question.

'Where do we find all these virgins?'

Could the NZ ecconomy withstand a Ch-Ch scale event in Wellington.  What would happen to our ecconomy.  Would we be better off at some point down the track, from this scare, seeking full union with Australia because after another big event we may be knocking at their door cap in hand.

I would look for a provider who still does it per sq metre. That online calcualtor isn't that good either. It fails to even have underfloor heating on it as an option.

The government is going to have to look at setting up an national insuance company again. It appears EQC is no longer relevent, and only slows down the process, and is underwritten by the government anyway now. I don't blame EQC either, they are just working within their limitiations.  State insurance was sold off. So many people now can't get affordable insurance cover, especially in apartments in Wellington. Those apartments are now worth a lot less as a result of the higher perceived risk. That risk really needs to be spread across the entire country, to make the insurance affordable for all.