Apparently people from some group or tother ?council? government? are going to come round our houses and survey us to see how hard we think our house shook in the Feb. 2011 quake. I don't get this. Surely we have good empirical evidence from scientific measuring about how hard the ground shook. The Christchurch earthquakes are probably some of the best and closest observed in the world, especially for the phenomenon of liquefaction. So what does it gain us to know how hard we think our houses shook? Compared to what? To the previous earthquake? To other earthquakes we have known in the past or in other countries? The February earthquake felt harder and from a different direction than the September one, but was over more quickly. There was more damage, but I didn't think I was going to die, unlike the four o'clock in the morning September one, when death became a more than likely possibility. But what sort of conclusions can be gained by gathering this knowledge I don't know. Asking people's opinions of what they think they felt two years ago is not really hard data is it? It's not the the sort of information that should be used to formulate future safety plans or building codes, I would have thought. What is the point? I don't understand.
I'll do what I do with phone surveys - ask how much they're planning to pay me for my valuable contribution.
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