My neighborhood is called Mount Victoria, after the highest peak in the city. I wanted to hike up there to get that famed 360 degree view over the city and the harbor, luckily a bus line went half way up – the rest of it was tough enough.

On top, I was reward with a price view over the harbor. It really is uniquely shielded from the sea.

However, several major fault lines run directly through the Wellington area, and the landscape has changed many times, even in recent history. Frequent earthquakes have lifted land upwards and moved shorelines in the past two centuries alone. The city sits right on top of them, half on the Pacific plate, half on the Australian plate.

The fault line runs all along the North-western shore of the harbor, where the highway leads from Wellington to Lower Hut. Actually, before the quake 1855, the land was under water. The highway uses the strip of land that emerged by the enormous uplift created when the Pacific plate moved a bit further under the Australian one.

That quake also extended Wellington into the harbor. All across town you can see signs in the streets indicating the 1840 coast line. Lambton Quay, a street now in the heart of the CBD, was actually the quay, today it is up to 200 meters from the water.

I find that fascinating – and I realized that I have a number of Earthquake endangered cities on my list: Santiago, Valparaíso, San Francisco, Wellington, Christchurch, Tokyo, Istanbul…

Many houses here are constructed with wood – as in San Francisco. Simply because the wood structure will be more flexible in case of a major quake. and you won’t be crushed by falling concrete…

During the tour of Parliament I learned how they re-designed the historic buildings to make them earthquake proof. The Kiwi engineers have invented a whole system, separating the buildings from their foundations and inserting buffers made of steel and rubber. Those can absorb major shocks and let the whole building swing in any direction by up to 30 cm…

I’m curious to get into Christchurch, a city still struggling to rebuild after the 2010 and 2011 quakes, and also discussing what to do with the areas of town that are no longer stable ground and will have to be abandoned…

I’m off to the South Island on Monday and will spend two days in Christchurch next week.

More info: NZ EarthQuake Commission