White Paper

Canterbury Earthquake

On the 22nd February 2011, a 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck directly beneath one of New Zealand’s largest cities, Christchurch, claiming at least 180 lives and causing catastrophic infrastructural damage throughout the entire region.

Power and phone lines went down, and many cellular sites became either quickly congested or disconnected. Thousands of commercial, industrial and residential entities throughout Canterbury and Christchurch lost voice communications and power.

The following summary is a study of how one utility’s network fared during and after the earthquake when wired communications equipment was damaged from the force of the quake but their hardened UHF IP radios continued to perform.