People's Reactions
People experiencing earthquake light for the first time are at least puzzled or stunned. Some are terrified. For some observers long distances from the display, earthquake light may be dismissed as sheet lightning or a major explosion, or even a hint of some kind of atmospheric phenomenon - like an aurora. But for people caught in a large earthquake and seeing such a display for the first time, reactions are more visceral. Some people have thought it was a nuclear explosion or nuclear war, WWIII, the end of the world, or a visitation from UFOs or space aliens.
It is only with the world-wide advent of smartphones, CCTV and security cameras on commercial buildings and homes, that the phenomenon has been captured and analysed. Earthquake Light is being scientifically explained and slowly research studies have been appearing in journals accounting for the often spectacular domes of blue-white light emerging from the ground.
Following are a few of many accounts collected from people in New Zealand who have experienced these phenomena first-hand. They were collected in a survey of about 300 people and relate both to the large Christchurch earthquakes [in 2010, and 2011 Mag 6.3 to 7.1] and another Mag 7.8 in Kaikoura in 2016 - both in the South Island of New Zealand. Many reports of earthquake light came from people hundreds of miles from the Kaikoura epicentre at the time - generated locally by pressure on related fault networks. Over 20 fault systems moved - deemed to be a world record.
The accompanying map shows the reach of the earthquake light reports and their distance from the Kaikoura and Christchurch quakes.
Driving to Christchurch from Darfield [west of Christchurch] at 09.30 p.m. on Friday 03/09/10 (the night of the Quake). Saw a strange halo/arc of light over the city of Chch. It was blue... I guess. Do not know how long it went on as I was concentrating on driving. Not too sure if connected to Quake but did seem odd at the time.
From a fisherman on the open sea near the port of Lyttelton (near Christchurch) early afternoon, during a large (M6) aftershock 6 months after the February quake. “I was looking out the front of the boat and I saw a couple of blue flashes down in the water, was definitely a flash, a dim blue flash. “The blue flashes were about 100 meters to the side of the vessel and shot from left to right in a straight line across us. Then the next minute it was like the boat hit something.”[An earthquake shock wave from the M6 aftershock{?}] The ocean depth was less than 12.4 m. The earthquake was 10 km under Lyttelton, on the Port Hills fault zone.
I was in Hastings at the time and there were hundreds of small flashes all around the sky like dim sheet lightning and then there were 4 or 5 huge flashes that lit up the entire sky. One actually lasted for about 5 seconds and shot up almost like a blue explosion. The colors were predominantly blue and green but there were shades of red. There was a massively huge blue light towards Mount Erin, due south of Hastings] (This was at the time of the Kaikoura earthquake, 2016 - 430kms to the south.
A man driving into Christchurch at the moment of the 4.35am earthquake (Mag 7.-1) 'The light display appeared first …. Greens on my left, east, blues on my right, west. The brilliant white light was directly over the city. The range of the light extended right out to sea, east, into the whole distance I could see. I was ‘inside’ the light [and it was hugging the ground, about car height.' He talked about driving over radials or rivulets of light - like a giant spiders's web - which he thought came from 'thousands of points where the ground had cracked'. His car lurched and would have tipped over if he had been a less experienced driver, he said.
Kapiti - One marine report from 50 km north of Wellington and on the West coast, was 'light of a royal blue colour' from the sea, and an observer 44 km north saw '2 white flashes to the south west coming from the sea.'
Many comments - from people up to hundreds of kms away from the quake epicentres - were of this nature: “I saw exactly what the video showed, but I was in New Plymouth/Blenheim (etc.) and I’m so relieved, I thought I was crazy”.
A married couple in Wellington saw two beams of light a metre above the floor and about a metre from the bed come through the wall of their bedroom, pass on either side of the bed and go out the wall on the other side.The first was entirely blue and he second blue and white. The blue colour seemed to move faster than the white. They occurred at the same time as an earthquake pulse and a booming sound (2016). They were 300 kms from the epicentre.
The colour of the flashes was a blue-white... The duration of the flashes was confined to the period of the earthquake and the number would have been at least six, and each lit up a large part of the sky.There did not appear to be a specific source like a concentrated point or jagged lightning flash, more of a bright round glow in the sky. The position of the glow changed with each flash. (Seddon)
Blenheim area, 2016 (verbatim)'During the terrifying moments of shaking I saw the sky lighting up around me - like sheet lightning coming from the ground. It was like a apocalyptic movie. But this is the strangest thing of all - the air was almost electric. I kept getting electric shocks off things like trolleys and random items. During the flashes it almost made a fuzzy feeling go through your body.
One observer living at a height of about 140m above Wellington Harbour saw a kind of 'curtain of blue-white light' between her and the opposite side of the street, which lasted about one minute, while the shaking continued. The light was rooftop-height and failed electricity lines were not causing this.
A man in Wellington on the hills, saw inside his house a blue light "like a layer of mist over his carpet."
Another observer in the Hutt Valley during the Kaikoura earthquake saw a light of about 2 m radius and about 2 m away, white and blue-green, that seemed to be electrically discharging and moving, and unable to pierce a grounded very coarse wire mesh fence, perhaps acting as a kind of Faraday cage. The display may have lasted as long as 7 seconds.
Greymouth: Observer saw offshore what looked like “magnesium bombs” i.e. brilliant white eruptions at the sea-surface, and relatively regular for the several observed. Nor far away - at Runanga a couple spotted blue and purple light in the sky from the sea, during the shaking. The sky out to sea was full of flashing lights, purple, blue and white. “It was almost like explosions of light.” A woman said she saw two very distinct, purple flashes, while a third and final light saw “the sky lighting up” Near Westport - in the same region - 2 members of a family saw green-blue flashes rising from the sea.