It was matter of all hands to the pump at the headquarters of a Whanganui security monitoring company immediately after the devastating quake wracked the top of the South Island early on Monday morning.
Wade Coneybeer, general manager of Alarm Watch, said the initial 7.5 quake activated hundreds of alarms across the country, stretching resources at the company's Guyton St headquarters to the maximum.
"From when first big quake struck just after midnight through until 4am our team responded to over 400 high priority alerts when alarms were activated and another 1100 low priority alerts for things like battery failures," Mr Wade said.
"In contrast on the normal Monday morning last week and during the same time period, we responded to 60 high priority alerts and 100 low priority alerts."
"We monitor thousands of alarms in the country and all of those alarms started activating. The volume of alarms going off was crazy."