Pongaroa unscathed despite large jolt

The quake that hit the lower North Island measured 5.8 on the Richter scale and was centred 15km east of Pongaroa.

The tiny Hawke's Bay-Wairarapa border township of Pongaroa barely missed a beat as one of the area's biggest earthquakes of recent years hit the area on Monday night.

The quake just after 9pm measured 5.8 on the Richter scale and was centred 15km east of Pongaroa. It and two others later in the night have been among more than 20 quakes recorded by GeoNet in the Route 52 districts since the weekend.

The major shake, which was felt over a wide area of the lower North Island, was the biggest in the Hawke's Bay-Wairarapa region since a shake measuring 6.2 east of Eketahuna on January 20, last year.

That was the biggest since the most destructive in the region in the last 25 years, on May 13, 1990, a late Sunday afternoon jolt measuring 6.5, centred around Weber.

Known as the Mother's Day Earthquake, it caused widespread damage, felling numerous older chimneys and resulting in the demolition of at least one building in Dannevirke.

Yesterday, a bar worker at Gowan Greene's Pongaroa Hotel, which was built as a bank in 1911, was not aware of any damage in the area from the latest shake. The hotel was not open at the time.

The frequency of earthquakes was not flustering the staff member, who said: "We don't really notice them, they happen all the time."

She recalled the Mother's Day Earthquake: "I was more worried where my kids were. They weren't home at the time."

Tomorrow is International ShakeOut Day of Action. New Zealand will be the first country to participate this year, at 9.15am. The aim is to get 1.5 million New Zealanders taking part, which should make it the biggest ShakeOut drill in the world, per capita.

The drill will reinforce the right action to take before, during and after a quake.