Quake shakes Far North area `like a sonic boom'

Mike Barrington | 19th September 2006

A loud bang accompanying an earthquake centred off Takou Bay on Sunday had some coastal residents checking the sky for a meteor.

A GeoNet report says the 8.34am earthquake 20km east of Kaeo and 20km north of Kerikeri was centred at a depth of 5km and had a magnitude of 3.5 on the Richter scale.

June Sale said she heard what sounded like a big explosion which shook her stone home at Te Ngaire, rattled windows and moved a picture on a wall.

"At first I thought something had landed on the roof," she said.

"Some people rushed out of their houses thinking it was something from space like they've been getting in the South Island."

Along the road at Te Ngaire, John McBain said "there was an awful boom and everything vibrated".

It had sounded like a door slamming loudly or a gas cylinder exploding.

"We thought maybe it was thunder, but it was too abrupt for that - more like a sonic boom."

At Matauri Bay, a woman at Oceans Holiday Village said the bang had sounded "like a quarry blast".

John Streamer felt a jolt at Tapuaetahi, at the southern end of Takou Bay, but his wife, Kay, said that after a late night on Saturday she was too tired to notice and would have attributed any earth tremors to "the kids jumping on the deck".

The bang was also heard at Kerikeri, where among the suggestions for its cause was: "We thought it might be a P lab blowing up."

Another "rattle" was heard much later on Sunday at both Matauri Bay and Te Ngaire, where Mrs Sale pointed out a unique anniversary.

She said it was 25 years to the day that "a smoky thing" appeared in her home during a major storm. Scientists had investigated and attributed the phenomena to plasma or ionised gas formed by lightning.