Hey thanks sparkyinak,
This was quite a large earthquake that was centred on a place called Culverden, which is about half way between Christchurch and the top of the south island and it is quite a way inland.
The quake was recorded as 7.5 on the Richter scale, which is much larger than the one that struck Christchurch in 2012.
It was relatively fortunate that the quake was 15km (9 miles) deep, although it claimed the lives of two people in Kaikoura when a building collapsed.
Thankfully though any sort of tsunami predicted never eventuated, that could have had a very devastating effect here as a lot of the south island is populated near the coastline.
Will keep you folks posted.
Here is a link to our local news website:
[color:#000099][b]Stuff NZ[/b][/color]