Northland lowest risk

Northlanders' thoughts may be with the victims of the Christchurch earthquake - but they could not be further from danger themselves.
As the death toll continues to rise from last Tuesday's quake, geologist Steve Edbrooke said Northland, with no known active seismic faults, had the lowest earthquake risk in the country.
"Northland is still classified as the lowest risk area. It has no hidden fault lines," he said.
Mr Edbrooke said while a number of earthquakes had been felt in Northland, none of them were stronger than 5 on the Richter scale.
Northlanders could feel a shake from another area, such as the Bay of Plenty, for instance, but the rare earthquakes that had their epicentre in the region would be small.
A geological map, compiled from a GNS Science survey earlier this year, shows Northland to be possibly the most stable region in the country.
The GNS survey and map also shows that Northland is made up of displaced rocks that have been broken and fractured over millions of years, making them relatively weak.
That, Mr Edbrooke said, explained why erosion and landslides were the dominant natural hazards in Northland.
Unknown seismic activity about 22 million years ago had placed the rocks that formed Northland on the seafloor about 100km northeast of Whangarei. The rocks had then been progressively shunted southwest by tectonic forces.