美国有线新闻 CNN 新西兰强震引发山体滑坡 可能已出现土壤液化（在线收听）

AZUZ: A week ago, we told you about the major 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck the South Pacific nation of New Zealand. At least two people were killed, thousands were stranded. A wave of aftershocks followed.

And as New Zealand is a mountainous country, experts estimate that between 80,000 to 100,000 landslides followed the quake. Some roads are closed indefinitely. Near the coasts, the quake lifted the seabed more than 6,000 feet higher. That left rocks and marine animals exposed above the level of the tide.

And here's a strange sight, this Newshub video shows three cows that were stranded when the ground collapsed around the spot where they were standing. Their owner had to dig a track, a path, through the soft soil to get them down.

How could this have happened?

JENNIFER GRAY, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Now, a lot times, you can get landslides with earthquakes as we know. But something a little bit more scary and sometimes they go hand in hand, is called liquefaction and that could have contributed to what happened here with these cows.

Let's go up here and talk about exactly what this is. So, you're seeing at the topsoil, you have the water table, the different layers underneath the ground.

When you have a very fine top soil like sand or silt, when you have an earthquake and the building start shaking, it can really loosen that top soil and what will happen is it will almost mix in with the water table and then it will just collapse, almost turning into a liquid and then just sinking down into the ground, and we think that maybe what's happened here. And then you have it on a steep incline, of course, it can trigger a landslide as well.