James Muirhead

So they would definitely feel the effects of it.

And then we also have other critical infrastructure, such as water reservoirs and dams in the Hinoa Ranges, which also would definitely feel the effects and potentially be damaged.

Yeah, it's totally possible.

So again, it's all down to getting a precise date on a displaced layer.

And we were able to do that using these different techniques.

And this showed us that the Mangatangi Fault has moved in the last 10,000 years.

And then that also raises the question, are there other fault lines in Auckland that have moved similarly in the last 10,000 years around the region?

Yeah, so you're correct that there are some fault lines below our streets, but they're not below all streets.

I'm just going to add that in.

So we have published fault maps on what we think are likely faults or possible faults.

And people are welcome to check those and see if their house is close to one of those.

But that does not mean that those faults are actually capable of generating earthquakes.

Below Auckland, all we know is that we have a number of fault lines.

It could be on the order of about 10 that are closer to the city centre.

And they've moved in the last 6 million years, which is a really long timeframe.

But they may not have moved what we call geologically think more recently in the last 100,000 years and may have no earthquake potential at all.

So the question is, are they active?

And the idea is for us to do work as quickly as we can to try to answer those kinds of questions.

So yeah, for those fault lines in and around Auckland City, we have this wonderful data set of what we call borehole data.

So you drill holes into the ground and then you can pull up rocks and understand rock layers at those locations.