Riche McCaw flies into recovery efforts as ‘earthquake lights’ mystify New Zealanders

FORMER All Black captain Riche McCaw has flown to the rescue as New Zealanders are mystified by blue lights in the sky.

Earthquake lights seen from a video posted on YouTube. Picture: YouTube. Zachary Bell

FORMER All Blacks captain Riche McCaw has flown into join the earthquake rescue efforts in his new role as a helicopter pilot.

“Like everyone else, I got woken up at midnight... yeah a bit scary,” he told the New Zealand Herald.

He helped fly to Kaikoura where one person had died in a house that collapsed and to check the damage to the landscape that has seen 1000 tourists and 2000 locals trapped in the town.

From the air, McCaw said there were plenty of “cracks in the road” and the side of hills.

“At one point, the railway was way out over the sea - it had been pushed out by slips. It would not have been a nice place to be at midnight last night.”

“Just from a selfish point of view, it’s nice to be able to fly but you’d like to be able to do it in better circumstances,” he said.

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key, right, talks with former All Blacks captain Richie McCaw as he flies into help with the rescue effort following the major 7.8 quake. Picture: Mark Mitchell/New Zealand Herald Pool Photo via AP.

It comes as New Zealanders have been mystified by flashes of blue and green light that lit up the sky around the same time as a massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck the South Island.

Social media user Zachary Bell uploaded a video of the flashing lights and said they lasted for between five and eight seconds at the “peak of the shaking”.

Another user known as Sana Aljoj posted a video on Instagram that attracted plenty of amazed comments.

Robyn Farnley said “that’s amazing. Never heard of that before.” Others online speculated it could be the result of lightning or powerlines rupturing.

The little-documented phenomenon is known as ‘earthquake lights’ and was also witnessed during the Christchurch earthquake in 2010 and in China 30 minutes before the Sichuan quake in 2008.

There is no scientific consensus on the cause however the phenomenon is genuine and thought to be the result of electrical charges generated along fault lines.

A National Geographic article on the “rare lights” often seen around quakes theorised they are caused by the “electrical properties of certain rocks in specific settings.”

Senior researcher at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Friedemann Freund, said common forms including “ball lightning” which floats in the air and others that can stretch up to 200 metres high.

New Zealand has suffered hundreds of aftershocks following the 7.8 magnitude quake that struck the central South Island on Monday.

Around 1000 tourists and 2000 residents are trapped in the coastal town of Kaikoura with roads both in and out of the town blocked by landslides.