Mike,
the impact kinda diminishes when you look at the history of that location
http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eq_depot/2008/eq_080929_xna6/neic_xna6_h.htmlthe bottom plot shows about 40 such quakes in the last 108 years.. the first plot shows that to be what I'd as a layman say is a rather active quake zone
>That was actually pretty far from New Zealand. Good thing, because a 7.3 quake is pretty major.