While shakes are nothing new to Cantabrians, a prototype earthquake-detecting app has appeared on Android phones across all of Aotearoa.
Those with the Android operating system on their phone can expect the system to give them alerts several seconds before a tremor rattles their homes.
Minute vibrations are first detected, compared to data from other phones across the network, and then a precise point is triangulated to where the quake is believed to be centred.
A "heads up" warning then arrives at each phone before a major shake is expected to ripple through.
Android is funded by Google, which wanted to harness the ability to detect the direction and speed of movement for sensing and mapping seismic activity.
This then, is not so much a new technology, but a more direct way to use the sophisticated tech we already have without us knowing. Early tests of the earthquake detection system reportedly went well in Los Angeles, California, but Google wanted to trial it across the board in New Zealand due to the frequency of earthquakes and the high number of Android users. For this reason, they also picked Greece.
At this point the feature is not available to those with an iPhone, but Google's product management team says they may benefit as long as there are Android users nearby.