Wednesday, 8 June 2011

Christchurch Quake - April report

This will be short as I am in the USA at present and writing on an iPad, which is not as easy as a computer. I didn't think I would have anything to write about the earthquake, but I do.

A couple of things are interesting.
I miss Christchurch. She is like a sick relative. I am anxious to hear how things are going for her. I check the #eqnz twitter feeds and TVNZ news app for the latest news. One thing that has alarmed us is the near collapse of the sewerage system. We are doing our bit just now by not being there.

We are minor celebrities as a result of the earthquake. Having said that, we have rather been knocked off the radar by Japan. At an LDSTech conference one of the session leaders had been following the Christchurch Stake Earthquake Facebook site and when I told him I was one of the admins, he interviewed me on camera about it.

I am a bit temperamental. My brother-in-law made a joke about the earthquake and I was not very responsive and nearly burst into tears.   It doesn't help to think that no one around us has any idea what is going on in Christchurch. I suspect to most people it is all over, and they expect that we are going on with our lives as usual. I think for many Christchurch people it will be a long time before usual is usual. We talk about the "new normal". Now when people find out we are from Christchurch and ask how things are I say that they are really bad. It's hard to explain how bad it is in financial terms for our country when the tsunami in Japan seems so dramatic in comparison.
I think the cost is estimated at about 25% of the annual GDP.

So it is nice to be away, but my heart is still in Christchurch.

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