Conway Fault ruptures

At just after midnight on the 14th November 2016 a magnitude 7.8 earthquake ripped through the countryside of north-eastern South Island. While the human impact effects of earthquakes are indeed sobering, earthquakes are also the vibrations caused by movement of the Earth's tectonic plates that cover the surface of this dynamic planet we call home. Without plate tectonics the continent of New Zealand would still be underwater and we would not have the dramatic and beautiful landscape that is renowned around the world. Fault ruptures like in this event have occurred many times in this region and throughout the South Island over the last 25 million years to slowly build up the mountains we see today.
The fault scarp viewed at this location is a bit over 1 m in height.
The landslides viewed at this location are just a few of the over 11,000 landslides throughout the region triggered as a result of the shaking. With slopes loosened and damaged after the earthquakes, heavy rainfall events and gravity will cause (and has caused) more landslides over time.

It's a rare opportunity to see "fresh" fault ruptures. The effect of pushing up a block of the ground relative to it's surroundings (and depending on it's geologic properties) creates a fault scarp that is more prone to erosion and will get smoothed over fairly quickly. It has always been a challenge for geologists trying to work out how much and how often a fault has ruptured in the past (and therefore how often it might do so again), when much of it may have been eroded away!
This event moved through the landscape at around 1.8 km per second! Therefore this relatively tiny scarp formed incredibly rapidly!