© Brett PhibbsRangitoto, sitting at our front door, a silent reminder of its violent arrival in two eruptions 600-700 years ago.
It hardly needs an official list from the council to remind Aucklanders that, like Christchurch, this city is peppered with old buildings that are likely to tumble down in a severe earthquake.
The main arterial roads through well-established suburbs such as Newmarket, Herne Bay, Mt Eden, Dominion Rd, Onehunga and Otahuhu all have clusters of 100-year-old, two-storey brick retail premises, shops downstairs, dwellings above.
In the CBD, old masonry buildings provide the "character" between the anonymous glass towers. Some have been strengthened, many not. The day after the Christchurch earthquake I emerged from a lunch bar in downtown Queens Arcade debating which side of the street would be safer to walk up if I succumbed to quake phobia.
Of course, venturing below the old harbour shoreline at Shortland St to the arcade was a bad move to start with. The old Auckland Regional Council's earthquake hazard guide warns that ground shaking would be greater in "reclaimed land such as parts of downtown Auckland".
This would also be prone to liquefaction, but only if the shake was "quite a large one", the guide says, helpfully adding that in Auckland there is "a 10 per cent chance of [that] occurring in the next 50 years".
As well as buildings falling on you and silt squirting up your trouser legs at that end of town, there's the added risk of death by tsunami.
