Why Pook?

When asked last evening whether I’d detected the mid-afternoon quake, I was unable to confirm the experience, as I was accompanying Tyler to Paraparaumu (also known as ‘Param’) on his final driving lesson and his test. I guess that quakes of lesser force are difficult to detect when you’re in a moving vehicle.

I saw no reports of any North Island quake on the TV news, either. Although that is not to say that they did not report one.

This morning, I opened up the quake site http://www.geonet.org.nz/quakes/latest   and there it was :

Why Pook? One of those Anglicisations of the Maori name. Ypuk

Waipukurau, also known as Ypuk, is the Central Hawke’s Bay District. It is located 50 km southwest of Hastings on the banks of the Tukituki River.

The town is close to the site of a Maori pa, from which it gets its name. (The word ‘pā’ can refer to any Māori village or defensive settlement, but often refers to hill forts - fortified settlements with palisades and defensive terraces and also to fortified villages). The pa was situated on the town's main hill, named Pukekaihau. The name is said to mean water of pukerau, pukerau being a type of fungus. At the 2006 census, the town had a population of 4,008.

(Above): The central part of the North Island, showing the location of Ypuk. The small red rectangle just north of Paraparaumu is where Waikanae is located, about 100 km south-west of Ypuk.

In the paper New Zealand Herald, the report reads: The magnitude 5.2 quake occurred at 2pm today 14 km southeast of Waipukurau at a depth of 40km. Waipukurau's Leopard Hotel staff described the quake as "quick and vicious."

"It shook up our patrons. People were running outside and climbing under tables. Some stock came off the shelves in the chiller but nothing smashed."

Countdown national communications manager Kate Porter said stock had fallen from shelves at Countdown Waipukurau. "We did have stock falling from shelves but damage was kept to a minimum," she said.

Waipukurau New World owner Deborah Walters said there was no stock damage to report, but ceiling tiles had come loose during the quake. "Staff and shoppers were quite shaken by it," she said.

More than 2000 people submitted the quake as "felt" to the GeoNet website, with submissions coming from as far north as Hamilton and as far south as Marlborough in the South Island