Rosa, one of our gap students kindly gave up her time to join Year 10 to discuss her experiences. She was in Year 5 at school when the 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck Christchurch.

Rosa discussed how her neighbourhood was affected and how she saw the bizarre effects of liquefaction throughout the city. She candidly spoke about some of the innovations in earthquake design that have been introduced, including the cardboard church.

The Year 10 Geographers are currently studying the challenge of natural hazards. Part of the unit of work is investigating how the effects and responses to a tectonic hazard vary between two areas of contrasting levels of wealth. We study the earthquakes which occurred in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and Christchurch, New Zealand. As they both occurred on conservative plate margins, both in 2010 and also having the same magnitude makes them fascinating examples to compare.

Thank you to Rosa for giving the students her eye witness account, they really appreciated it.