A tsunami warning has been downgraded in New Zealand following a magnitude-5.9 earthquake.<\/p>\n
The quake struck 40 kilometres north of Te Anau with the west coast of the South Island from Milford Sound to Puysegur Point likely to be affected.<\/p>\n
Emergency officials had previously said the quake was a magnitude-6.3 and issued a tsunami warning.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That warning has since been downgraded to an advisory. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Although the tsunami alert was cancelled, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said it expected coastal areas to experience “strong and unusual currents and unpredictable surges at the shore”.<\/p>\n
It said people should move out of the water, off beaches, and stay away from harbours, marinas and rivers.<\/p>\n
NZ’s GeoNet system said “strong” shaking was felt in the area after the quake.<\/p>\n
Local resident Maylene Puyat, the duty manager at Te Anau’s Fiordland Hotel, told Reuters the earthquake was “a bit strong” and she felt shaking for one minute.<\/p>\n
“In the hotel, it’s shaking, but nothing moved in the hotel,” she said.<\/p>\n
Another resident told local outlet Otago Daily Times the earthquake shaking was “long and loud” and sounded “like a train”.<\/p>\n
“The walls were definitely moving,” they said.<\/p>\n
The town of Te Anau is the the gateway to the tourist hotspot of Fiordland, a glacier-carved region in the country’s south-western corner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A tsunami warning has been downgraded in New Zealand following a magnitude-5.9 earthquake. The quake struck 40 kilometres…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":803892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9989,43,376776,1736,44,376775,41,39,42,40,9990],"class_list":["post-803891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-earthquake","tag-headlines","tag-milford-sound","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-te-anau","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-tsunami"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/803892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}