When the earth drops: New footage of quake-made canyon

"Gobsmacking" drone footage has captured an up-close view of a massive canyon created near Mt Lyford by last month's 7.8 Kaikoura earthquake.

Pete Turner, of Christchurch-based Turners Media Productions, recorded the huge rupture in the landscape on a property near the Lottery River owned by Kara Lynn and Stephen Palmer.

Turner, a CAA-approved UAV operator, drove his truck to the back of their property and came to a stop where what was a slope had given way to form a sheer cliff face.

There, he deployed a drone to get a picture of what lay beyond the edge.

"I'm guessing, probably from where I was standing, the bottom of the closest cliff face was around 30m - but if you look at the bottom of the actual gully, it would be at least 50m deep."

A Google satellite image previously showed the newly formed deep valley was only a slope, he said.

"It was just gobsmacking. I wasn't expecting to see what I saw."

But Turner said he didn't comprehend the enormity of the landslide until editing the video on his back home in Christchurch.

"I had the high quality stuff on my big screen at home and my mouth was wide open," he said.

"And this was just one part of the community - this kind of stuff is all over the place."

- NZ Herald