A 5.6-magnitude earthquake rocked New Zealand's North Island on Monday morning, but Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who gave a live television interview, did not let go of her calm. The quake occurred shortly before 8 a.m. local time (10 p.m. Sunday in Paris), at a depth of 52 kilometers off the city of Levin, which is located about 90 kilometers north of Wellington.
The shock was felt up to Wellington where the head of government was questioned live during an early morning broadcast from a parliament building designed to absorb earthquake forces by oscillating on its foundations. "We are having an earthquake here," she told the host of the Auckland-based show, much further north of the island, while quickly looking around. Then, smiling, she regained her full confidence and continued the interview.
According to the New Zealand seismic monitoring service GeoNet, there have been around 40 aftershocks. Rescuers and police said they had no knowledge of any casualties or property damage. There was no tsunami alert. The archipelago is at the limit of the tectonic plates of Australia and the Pacific, an area which is part of the Pacific "ring of fire", where up to 15,000 earthquakes are recorded each year. But only between 100 to 150 are strong enough to be felt.
An earthquake measuring 6.3 killed 185 people in February 2011 in Christchurch, on the South Island. In 2016, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Kaikoura, on the northern coast, was the second strongest on record in the country.