SOME people claim to hear them coming, others can seemingly sense the impending arrival. Animals too can behave oddly, giving a pointer that an earthquake is on the way.
But for most people, the large jolt that hit at 10.36pm on Tuesday would have come as a complete surprise. It was a sudden and unpleasant taste of what Canterbury people have been suffering through for close to two years; only where for us earthquakes are an infrequent occurrence, those living in Christchurch have spent the past 21 months constantly on edge. For them, it's not a matter of if but when the next quake will hit and how big it will be.
So much has been written and said about the Christchurch situation, but what happened here on Tuesday doesn't even come close to the reality of life for our southern counterparts.
There was no forewarning of Tuesday's magnitude 7.0 earthquake off the Taranaki coast. As far as our scientific knowledge has advanced, we are still unable to track the movements of our planet to accurately predict when and where seismic activity will occur.
Yet, for all that science can do, often it is animal instinct that provides the best clues.
