Someone was killed in the 2010 earthquake, but we just found out

Dave Hallett/Staff

Deans Homestead’s Homebush home was badly damaged in the September 4, 2010 earthquake. Its occupants were lucky to have survived serious injuries.

The Canterbury earthquake of September 4, 2010 was one of the largest in New Zealand’s recent history and was notable for the fact that no one was killed.

It now appears that this is a mistake.

The 7.1-magnitude earthquake with an epicenter in Darfield shook Canterbury awake at 4.35 am and caused severe damage to the area. Another devastating earthquake followed with an epicenter near Lyttelton on February 22, 2011, killing 185 people.

The official history records one death in the Darfield earthquake, but this was an indirect death that occurred when a woman ran away from her home during the tremor and had a heart attack.

Read more: * Strong earthquakes rock China * 10 years since the Darfield earthquake shook New Zealand: What have we learned? around the world?

A little-known paper titled “Country-wide earthquake-related mortality patterns” could lead to a rewriting of the official record. Written by scientists in 2018 and published in the American journal Earthquake Spectra in 2020, they found a death directly related to the earthquake.

Death occurred when the person was thrown from the toilet on the floor. There are no other details about the victim in the paper.

Coronial Services tried to find the coroner’s report on the death but it did not appear blank yet.

“As you might realize, searching such a large system with no name is a bit like trying to find the needle in the haystack,” a spokeswoman said.

supplied

University of Auckland research associate Shannon Abeling published a paper to update the death toll from the 2010 Darfield earthquake.

Deaths in earthquakes from falling or tripping are rare. The paper identified only 13 earthquake deaths between 1840 and 2017, from trips, falls, or collisions with an object unrelated to construction.

Two of those killed were in the 1931 Hook Bay earthquake when a boy fell on a spike and another when a man fell off his couch. Four people died in the 2011 Christchurch earthquake due to injuries from falling or tripping during the tremor.

The paper’s lead author, Structural Engineer Shannon Appling, Research Fellow in the University of Auckland’s Department of Engineering, said Darfield’s additional death was detected by a dataset using ACC records to check the death toll. ACC contributes to the cost of funerals as people die in accidents.

She could not give any other details about the victim due to confidentiality obligations regarding the data.

Ian McGregor/Staff

Buildings in downtown Christchurch were catastrophically damaged in the September 4, 2010 earthquake, but despite having narrow escapes, no one was killed in the city center.

She said it was not unusual for seismic records to be adjusted up or down. Other research I was involved in showed that official records of the death toll from the Hawk’s Bay earthquake included seven deaths that were not related to the earthquake and seven that were not but were not recorded.

She added that the media recorded the initial death toll and it took some time to make up the data because not every family came forward. The death toll in New Zealand was lower, so it was easy to be accurate.

“It is also important how people in the hospital report. It may not appear as death due to the earthquake.”

The paper received little exposure in New Zealand and had not “goed out of my way” to draw attention to the research.

Dean Williams / Stuff

Members of the Hurorata community in Canterbury discuss the state of the city since the 2010 earthquake. (Video first published in September 2018)

Getting the correct records was important because information from previous earthquakes was used to predict possible death rates in the future. She said lessons can be learned from preventable deaths.

“Victims are people so you want to know what happened from a human perspective.”

“In reality, not all earthquake deaths are reported,” said University of Otago epidemiologist Nick Wilson, who co-authored the paper. He said that the statistics did not reveal cardiovascular deaths from various stresses resulting from an earthquake-related event.

The paper looked at deaths directly or indirectly attributed to major earthquakes in New Zealand between 1840 and 2017 and classified them by context and cause of death.

Ian McGregor/Staff

Owen Trowbridge, 16, shows the scale of damage at Kayaboy after the 2010 Darfield earthquake.

showed that the death toll from earthquakes was difficult to correct. Hawke’s Bay earthquake toll has been reported differently at 251, 255, 256, 258 and 261.

The paper identified at least 489 deaths linked to 21 earthquakes in New Zealand between 1840 and 2017, and 11 more deaths from secondary causes such as relief efforts. Approximately 90% of deaths resulted from damage to buildings.

Mortality rates were equally distributed between males and females, the median age of death was 38 and people over 80 years of age had the highest mortality rate.

The two deadliest earthquakes in New Zealand were the Hawke Bay earthquake (magnitude 7.4) and Christchurch earthquake (magnitude 6.2) in 2011 with 256 and 185 deaths respectively.

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