RECENT EARTHQUAKE

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 245, 11 July 1921, Page 4

RECENT EARTHQUAKE

APPARENTLY BEGAN NEAPv GISBORNE. A message was sent to tho observatory at Apia. Samoa, a few days, ago, asking for a report on the earthquake which shook New Zealand on' the morning of June 29. The result is a cable message, received by .the Government Seismologist (Dr. C. E. Adams), stating that the Samoan experts calculated from their records that the disturbance originated approximately 26 degrees south of Apia. A few days” after the earthquake, it was retorted from Sydney that the Riverton Observatory records indicated that the point of origin was 40 mitre southeast of Napier. Whatever the exact position was. it was too close for any reliable deduetion to to made from the records! obtained in New Zealand. It is possible with clear seismograpn records to deduce very accurately ti e distance traversed by the earthquake waves; but life direction from which they have come cannot be ascertained nearly so exactly. Both Riverton and Apia may to out in their alignment, but correct as to distance. If the two estimates of distance are combined, the necessary variation from the directions given by the observatories are sma 11, and the apicentre then appears, to to very close to Gisborne. That this location is approximately correct is indicated bv the chart: which hns been prepared tinder Dr. Adam's direction from the large number of available reports from New Zealand, giving the time and intensity of the shock. This chart clearly shows Gisborne as lying tn or on the edge of a narrow zone of maximum intensity and earliest time.