There was an earthquake, followed by a large number of large aftershocks across a large swath of the country, in the South Island of New Zealand a couple of days ago.

Followed by some tsunami warnings which had people heading for high ground along a good chunk of the East Coast.

Followed by a storm which blew into the middle of the country to really make things difficult.

I have no idea whether it made the news in your area; We are, after all, right out at the raggedy edge of the world in some respects, and there are some fairly momentous things happening these days.
I’d like to let you know that the Big Red Couch crew are all fine.

• I (Craig) am in the UK, and would have to try very hard to get any further from the quakes.
• Ben lives hundreds of kilometers from the events, and is unaffected. And until he read the news reports, unaware.
  (that said, some people in the same city did feel them)
• Kevin & Tonya live much closer, and felt the quakes to be significant enough to seek shelter from any falling objects.
  (their cat slept through the whole thing)

Sadly, there have been fatalities from this; Two as I write this.

There’s no shortage of news reports from sources across the full range of reliability, but here, if you’re interested, is the Official Word from Geonet, who are the go-to people in New Zealand for this sort of thing – M7.5 Kaikoura Quake: What we know so far

And now, a request.

Please, if you don’t have an emergency kit at home, wherever home may be, put one together.
If you do have one, now would be a fantastic time to check that it’s up to date, nothing’s expired, the electrical bits actually work, … That sort of thing.