Magnitude 5.8 earthquake strikes New Zealand's North Island region
A magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck New Zealand's North Island region on Friday at a depth of just 10 kilometers, the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre reported. Shallow quakes like this tend to shake the surface harder than deeper ones of equal size.
A magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck New Zealand's North Island region on Friday at a depth of just 10 kilometers, the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre reported. Depth matters as much as magnitude in how an earthquake is felt on the ground. A shallow quake like this one, only 10 kilometers down, transmits more of its energy directly to the surface than a deeper quake of the same magnitude would. That is why shallow events often produce noticeably stronger shaking for people close to the epicenter, even without a higher reading on the scale, and why local authorities pay close attention to depth readings, not just magnitude, when assessing risk after a quake like this one. New Zealand sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, one of the most seismically active regions in the world, where the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates grind against each other, producing frequent earthquakes across both islands. No casualties or structural damage have been reported so far.