The Christchurch Earthquake

I was awake at the time, 4.30am, and just starting to listen to a talk on my iPhone, when I heard a noise like a big wind coming up. Then everything started to shake, and I got out of bed and under the doorway to the hallway. It was such violent shaking that I had to hold onto the door frame. Mark had been sleeping in the living-room as I have a cough which keeps him awake. He appeared at the door soon after I did. Jonathan went under his bed. We just held on and waited for the shaking to stop. The lights went out either while it was shaking or straight afterward.

I used my iPhone to light my way and we called out to check that Jonathan was okay. We got the head-torches and looked around to see what was happening. (Ooh there’s another shake! There have been over 30 after-shocks, one of which was of magnitude 5.) We looked out the front  door and could hear alarms and sirens going. It was very dark, as there were no street lights. We couldn’t open the door into my office as all the shelves had come down, spilling books all over the floor. Jonathan’s door was blocked by his DVD rack, and the DVD rack in the living room had come down too. Some of the ornamental eggs had fallen off the shelf and one was broken, as was the glass in a picture of the Saviour. We turned off all the electrical power points so that there would not be surges when the power came on again.

Cranford St shops

It wasn’t light until about 6.15, and in the intervening time I ate some cold cereal, we lit the fire, rang my mother and Peter and had a look at the other damage. The wood pile had gone over, so we had to sort that out before we could get into the garage. In there, the mess was less than what we had feared. It smelled really strong, though, as a bottle of Lynx deodorant had broken. There was little loss of food – just one can of baked beans and a bottle of Worcester sauce. William’s room was a bit of a mess as it is full of stuff, so we had to sort that out to get to the drums, as a drum teacher was coming to see Jonathan that morning. (He didn’t actually come though).

I was concerned that Peter didn’t answer when I called on the phone, so we cleared the mess off the red car and I drove out to Kainga to check on him. He, in the meantime had gone to my mother’s place, back in town. There was little obvious damage around, though there were more cars than usual at that early hour of a Saturday, and there were no street lights and no other lights. The cell phones were working for the first while, and texting was available, but later in the morning the emergency batteries on the towers ran out, so there was no cellular coverage at all.

One thing we had not done well was that we did not have a battery powered radio at hand. We will buy one next week! We were able to find out a little on my iPhone while we still had cellular coverage. We never lost water supply completely, though it was rather low pressure.

When I got back from Peter’s it was light, and we could start working out what needed to be done. We managed to get into my room and William’s room and the office, and could see books everywhere! First we tidied up the living room and picked up the DVDs so that we had a nice area to hang about in. I also picked up the food from the pantry. We rang Mother, and as she had no power and it was a cold morning (about 2 degrees Celsius, 36 degrees F) we invited her and Peter over to be with us until they got the power back. Our woodburner was fine, and kept the house toasty warm. I also managed to cook toast on it, and fry an egg for breakfast. By the time they got around I had boiled some water so they could have a hot drink.

Mother brought her radio with her, so we listened on the hour to the different accounts of what had happened and what was happening. We also had phone calls from Michael (my brother) in Brisbane, Ann (my aunt) in London, and various people from Christchurch comparing notes and making sure that all was well with us. Later in the day my uncle Roger called from Paris. I got to tell them all about Rogo, once we had established that all was well with us. I rang the Mission Office where William is so that they could tell him that we were all fine and that there was nothing to worry about.

Footbridge over the Avon - all twisted up

I cooked lunch on the woodburner, and the power finally came on in the mid-afternoon. Jonathan spent most of the time in the living room with us, as there was no power for his usual activities. I felt there could be many bored teenagers, wondering what to do without power. We found it rather peaceful, though the main worry was what would happen to all the food in the freezers if the power didn’t come on fairly soon. It was great when the power came on and we could use the computers and also watch the television and see what had happened. The bizarre thing was earlier in the day, people from London and out of town had a better idea of what was going on, in many ways than we did. I dabbled with tidying my room, but got spooked with the aftershocks, so I ended up not doing much useful at all. It was all rather surreal, and difficult to believe that it was really happening – here!

We were asked not to flush the toilets, and instructed to boil the drinking water as the supply may have been compromised. As it was a beautiful, clear sunny day, this was really no hardship. Mark and I took Mother home, and had a bit of a drive around. The shops on Cranford Street where the busstop is, were pretty much destroyed. What really stood out was all the fallen chimneys. About half the brick chimneys had either toppled onto the ground, crashed through the roof, or were in a very precarious state. There were people on the roof everywhere you looked. The central business district has been very hard hit, particularly the older buildings with brick facades, which have fallen off. It seems that about 100 of them will need to be taken down, and about 300 residences in the other parts of Christchurch.

The next morning we slept in, though the night had been disturbed by aftershocks. These were sometimes quite severe, and always worrying, in case it was another big one. There have been over 30 aftershocks, many of which we would have remarked on as being a big earthquake if we hadn’t just had a REALLY big earthquake.  When I woke, I felt like James, a teenage boy in a book called “Homecoming”, who every morning as he wakes up and sees his surroundings, comments, “It’s still true.” As I was jolted awake by yet another aftershock, it was patently obvious that it was “still true.”

Showing Jonathan the cracks in the ground

There was no church, as the chapels have all been damaged, our one quite badly, it seems. The day was rather grey but warm, and in the afternoon Mark and Jonathan and I went out on the bikes to have a look around, and try to show Jonathan a bit of what had happened. Peter Cammock called it “Earthquake Tourism”, which is a term I preferred to “rubbernecking”. It was quite spooky. In the area down by the Avon between our place and the Chapel, it has been fairly hard hit, with large cracks in the road, and piles of silt where it has bubbled out of the ground due to a phenomenon called liquefaction. There are houses on severe leans, and driveways which have buckled. Many of the roads are closed, and the Gayhurst Road Bridge is badly damaged and closed. It was a grey day, and rather sombre, and people were walking or biking around, looking at the results. It was so much like a post-apocalyptic movie, that it was a strain to think that it was really real and really Christchurch. I just want things to go back to normal and I’m sure I am not alone in that.

The way the services have coped, the buildings have stayed up and the general populace has behaved has been exemplary. I feel so proud to be from here. There is a feeling of calm and sense, rather than panic and grandstanding. The University is closed for the week as there is so much to clear up and it will also help the city to delay the return of 10,000 or so students from out of town for a week. It is mindboggling what needs to be done. So many buildings to repair or replace, so many pipes to fix, roads to dig up and rebuild, bridges to make safe. It is unlikely that it will all be fixed in a year. Mark has commented that surveying is going to be made more complex because reference marks will have moved a considerable amount.

Gayhurst Rd bridge cracks

Mark commented that during the quake he wasn’t scared, but rather waiting for it to stop. I can’t remember how I felt, and I feel bad now that I didn’t call out to Jonathan until the quake was over. I seem to remember it was very noisy. I think my main thought was disbelief – this can’t really be happening, and what is going to happen next? It was very strong, but somehow not as strong as you would think would be needed to do so much damage. Jonathan just coped in his own self-contained way and produced some interesting theories, one being that lighting the woodburner was causing the aftershocks,

As I write this we have gone a number of hours without aftershocks. I am feeling much better as a result. The over-riding feeling is of relief that there was so little injury, and I think just one life lost. For some families life will never be the same again, as they will have to leave their homes. I looked at some photos on the NZ Herald website and felt almost overwhelmed with sadness for people who have lost so much. The loss of those character buildings is a loss for us all. We know two families whose houses are badly damaged. The CBD will look quite different now. So much to do, but also so much to be grateful for.I feel much more ready to divest myself of some of our stuff that clutters up our lives. An event like this brings focus to what really matters.