Significant events

Since 2014, Canterbury has experienced, responded to, and we continue to recover from, a wide range of significant events. The insured losses alone from these events are over $2.6 billion dollars, and the impacts have been felt across all communities and sectors in Canterbury. The larger recent events include:

• Earthquakes – the Hurunui-Kaikōura 7.8Mw earthquake in November 2016, which ruptured over 20 faults, and has been described as the “most complex earthquake ever studied”
• Wildfires – the Port Hills fire (2017)
• Severe weather – including floods (2017, 2019, 2021); the Timaru hailstorm (2019); and two back-to-back Canterbury windstorms over 5 days in September 2021
• Terrorism – the Christchurch shootings in March 2019
• Pandemic – the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic
• Tsunami – numerous tsunami warnings and threats, most recently the complex 5 March 2021 response to 3 Kermadec trench earthquakes (7.3Mw, 7.4Mw and 8.1Mw) over six hours

We have also had many "smaller" events that have required alerting the public, working with communities, and coordinating response activities.

Canterbury continues to support other regions’ events including the Edgecumbe flood (2017), Pigeon Valley fire (2019), Southland floods (2020), Lake Ōhau fire (2020), Napier floods (2020), multiple severe weather events on the West Coast, and the Marlborough floods (2021).