Mild aftershocks can really fray the nerves, I cannot imagine what this is like. Approx 65 killed as of this AM. Bad timing too - midday...
What is interesting to me is this happened in the downtown where at least from appearances the buildings which suffered don't seem to be uniformly old, or of unreinforced brick and this is certainly not the third world where clay is the main building material.
I'd be very interested in the building code angle. I understand the quake was about 6.3 and shallow (est. 5 km) and located beneath the city.
Living in the San Francisco Bay Area - was in SF just yesterday to tour Alcatraz with my son - I'm always paying attention to cracks and shifts such as in our streets (I've watched one make its way across the street in 4 years w/only small quakes), buildings, etc. Heck, the Memorial Coliseum where the Cal Bears play football is going to be rebuilt since among other things it lies on a major fault in Berkeley and is old. Where we sit the two exterior walls of the stadium have come apart and are held together by a metal patch straddling the gap. I had all the stucco of our house removed during our remodel since its construction pre-dated the use of shearwall material. We shearwalled the entire house and had that inspected. Feel much better in the case of an earthquake now.
So that is my concern beyond the people aspect: what if anything can/should be done differently in the building code and even inspection process in NZ and elsewhere. In such countries material, construction skill and engineering skill are clearly available. In California we try to be on the leading edge of this aspect of construction, but there is room for improvement especially if you're sitting on a faultline. I'm sure people from here will go to NZ to study the failures and see where any gaps exist in our own code.
In the meantime, I hope the best for those affected.
