Te Anau quake: Civil Defence website crash to be probed

Southland's mayor says the council will be looking into reports that the Civil Defence website went down during Thursday night's tsunami emergency.

A magnitude 5.9 earthquake struck 40 kilometres north of Te Anau at 9.14pm, sparking an order to evacuate coastal areas along the West Coast of the South Island, from Milford Sound to Puysegur Point.

The emergency was downgraded about half-an-hour later and the evacuation order was cancelled.

But Southland Mayor Rob Scott said it was good that people took the situation seriously.

"It's been quite a shake down there, but it's been quite pleasing to hear that that risk has been minimised and there's no need for an evacuation, although I was talking to people connected to people out at Milford Sound, because there are people staying out there. They did the right thing, they got to higher ground straight afterwards, so it was pleasant to hear that people did the right thing at the time".

However, he said it appeared the Civil Defence website buckled under pressure.

"I had heard that the site had gone down due to demand, which is something we'll have to look at".

He said the region had escaped relatively unscathed.

"I've heard so far that everyone is OK and there's been a little bit of damage to some of the properties in terms of cracking in houses and the like, but the important thing is that so far, I've heard that everyone is OK."

Scott said the earthquake was a reminder that an emergency can happen at any time.

The tsunami warning was also cancelled late last night.

The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said there were no tsunami signals detected by Earth Sciences in the two hours after the event, showing there was no ongoing tsunami activity affecting the area and the threat had passed.

Website issues

An investigation into why the website crashed would be carried out. A spokesperson could not confirm when the site went down, or how long for, but said it was back online before the warning was downgraded around midnight.

He said early indications were the site failed due to a firewall issue.

An emergency mobile alert went out to about 40 people living in Milford Sound.

Civil Defence director John Price told Morning Report people should not rely on technology, and trust their "human danger sense". He said it was impossible to be "100 percent ready".

"We do live in a very vulnerable area. People need to be prepared, they need to have a plan."