Quake Hits Lord of the Rings Land

A world heritage site used as a location for the Lord of the Rings films has been badly damaged by more than 200 landslides after a massive earthquake in southern New Zealand.

The Fiordland national park was hit early last Friday by a quake as powerful as the one that hit San Francisco in 1989, measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale.

It struck 12 miles beneath the mouth of Doubtful Sound, a 24-mile inlet so deep it could swallow the Empire State Building, and has been followed by more than 70 aftershocks.

Geologists surveying the remote area by helicopter say the number of resulting landslides could total 220.

"We've seen half a dozen slips which had torn away 1.5km of earth and rock vertically, from the tops of ridges right down to sea level," said Martin Reyners, a seismologist with New Zealand's institute of geological and nuclear sciences.

"It's made quite an impact. A lot of the trees have ended up in the fjords as a hazard to navigation."

New Zealand experiences 200 tremors a year. No deaths or injuries were recorded on Friday.

The alpine fault which caused the tremor is one of the world's most active earthquake zones.

A quake 10 times as strong occurs in the area every 250 to 300 years. The last one was in 1717.