Heard the following from Duck:  “By now you know we had a pretty good shaking here at midnight. Exciting! We are on 24 hr. delay; no reason given but I assume weather”.

I won’t pretend to be authoritative-  you have the internet,  you can find information. But to summarize,  a big (7.5 magnitude) and aftershocks have hit the South Island of New Zealand,  about midnight their time.  Christchurch felt the quake,  but the initial earthquake was about 100 km north Kaikoura, with aftershocks cascading eastwards to the coast, so the main threat to Christchurch is tsunamis. There’s been many coastal evacuations as a result.

It does look like there’s been casualties in Kaikoura-  my hopes and prayers are with the victims and the responders, and let’s all hope there’s no fatalities.