Christchurch Quake February 2011 - the first week

This was originally posted on 27 February 2011, five days after the quake/

It is a clear sunny beautiful morning in Christchurch, New Zealand. It could be any Sunday in late summer, except we aren't going to church this morning. For short periods of time I forget, and life seems like normal. Then I remember not to use tap water to clean my teeth, or a helicopter flies over, and all of a sudden “It's still true.”

What is still true is that Christchurch, which escaped lightly from a 7.1 earthquake on 4 September 2010, has been badly damaged by a 6.3 earthquake on Tuesday 22 February 2011. For many people life will never be the same again. The city will never be the same again. It is truly dire. The damage to the central city and eastern suburbs has to be seen to be believed – and then it just seems like a nightmare.

Tuesday lunchtime. Rosie and I had just left my office on the third level of the Commerce building to go for a walk and chat as we do most Tuesdays. I had my keys and iPhone in my pocket and carried an umbrella. As the weather was a bit dodgy we decided to do two short laps of the university in case it rained. We had just entered the stairwell when an aftershock hit. But this was not like the aftershocks we had been experiencing since September – or rather we knew this one was a bad one. I grabbed on to the handrail or I would have fallen over, and Rosie pulled me back out of the stairwell and we stood by a wall on the third floor while the shaking continued. Elsewhere in the building people sheltered under tables and desks. Pieces of concrete fell in the stairwell, close to where we had been standing.

When the shaking stopped we headed back into the stairwell, where we made very slow progress to the bottom floor and out. Morgan, a young man I know who is blind, was ahead of me with his guide-dog, OJ and note-taker, Kate. They were walking rather slowly so I volunteered to be sighted-guide for Morgan. We walked out to an open grassy place near the Te Ao Marama building and waited there for further instructions. There were people streaming out of the university, mostly calm but worried, and many trying to contact people on their cellphones. While we were standing there another aftershock came through and I sat on the grass to avoid falling over. There is something so wrong about the ground beneath you moving like that.

I was shaking and a bit shocked and didn't really know what to do. It became apparent that we would not be going back in the buildings that day, and that we should go home. After initially splitting up with Morgan, I found him again. Rosie went home and I set out to take Morgan and OJ home to Westmoreland. That was a drive I will never forget. To start with it took over 30 minutes to get out of the carpark as, not surprisingly, everyone else was trying to get out. People were generally courteous and did the “Let one in and go”, though I got frustrated when the driver in front of me let everyone in before her. We were listening to Radio New Zealand National and hearing the terrible news about the Christchurch Central Business District.

All this time I was trying to contact home and Mark, but the phone lines were overloaded. About the time I got to Riccarton Road (1:52pm) I got a text through. Mark had been at the airport to pick up his mother who was due to arrive at 12:50, but her plane was late to leave Rotorua and thus missed landing as the earthquake hit. I then managed to get through to the landline and spoke to William. Things were all over the floor, but all of them were fine. No power and no water. The battery radio we had bought after the September Quake was bringing them news.

The traffic was barely moving. I had plenty of time to study the map to work out how to get to Morgan's house while avoiding bridges and difficult righthand turns. Part way down Blenheim Road a fire engine came through and the two lanes split to let it pass, our side mounting the kerb of the median strip. Just before we were due to turn right into Matipo Street another bad aftershock hit and the car bounced around. The earth was shaking every few minutes, but this was different. The high voltage power lines over Matipo Street shook alarmingly and a truck driver underneath them jumped out of his truck – probably unwisely, but who's to know? I was pretty stressed and the thought of being stationary under those lines if another shock hit was more than I could deal with. I waited until there was enough clear space before started out under them. It was only about 20m, but the traffic was so slow we could have been under them for several minutes.

Morgan was doing really well and we tried to chat about other things. OJ got a bit distressed and was panting away in front of him. We were trying to reach Morgan's mother to tell her that he was on his way home. I texted a message and had my phone sitting on my lap waiting for it to say that there was signal and then I sent it. Time and again it didn't get through, but finally at 1:55 it got through. We didn't get a response, and Morgan's mother, Brenda worked in town so we were both pretty anxious about that. I knew my own family was fine.

I remember feeling how much I did NOT want to be there. I wanted to be anywhere in the world except there right then. I grieved for my poor beautiful city and worried that many people had been hurt or killed. We had been so fortunate in the September quake to have no loss of life, but this was the real deal. I also wondered if I would be able to stay in Christchurch. After we escaped so lightly in the 7.1 quake I had felt confident that the big one had come and gone and nothing could hurt us.This seemed like a new quake and I wondered if I could ever feel safe again in Christchurch, and certainly any building. My confidence that it would not happen again had gone. Probably for good. If it could happen a second time, why not a third or fourth? Five months from now would there be another big one – only this time out at sea so we could have the novelty of a Tsunami to add to our troubles? How could we build again on shifting earth? Would tourists ever dare to visit now?

Finally about 3:00pm I made it to Morgan's house, where I could go to the toilet and was given a hot chocolate they had heated on a gas stove. Brenda told us about her walk home past the grey dust of the cathedral and Provincial Chambers. She told me of the statue headfirst into the paving, and the roads in metre-high peaks. It was so good to have that mission accomplished and Morgan home, but I knew I still had to get back across the city to home. Armed with a handful of therapeutic chocolates “left over from Christmas” (I'm sorry I don't understand – how does anyone have chocolates sitting in the house for two months and not eat them?) I headed back across the back route past Hornby and the airport. I picked up two hitch-hikers by the airport and took them to the main north road in Belfast before circling back in. It was all looking remarkably intact, though the traffic was heavy. The news reports got worse and worse.

The quake had hit in the worst possible time, with severe damage in the centre of town where people had been walking around at lunchtime, and eating at pavement cafes. Our heritage buildings had dropped their facades on innocent shoppers and office workers. And the landmark Cathedral spire had fallen, taking with it the people who had been admiring our tourist-attracting view.

It was such a relief to finally arrive home at 5:00pm. William and Mark and been working on the mess, but it was clear there was plenty more. After the earlier quake we had tied my four bookshelves together. That had worked – they didn't fall down, but all their contents were on the floor of my room. All our shelves in every room had emptied onto the floor. The woodpile had fallen over and onto our bicycles. The food-storage in the garage was on the floor. The fridge and freezer had come open and the power was off. Without water or power it is quite difficult to clean up. I cooked burgers on the barbecue, which made us all feel a bit better.

Mark and I walked the three blocks to check up on an elderly woman from church, who was fine, and her son from Lyttleton was with her. It was quite a mission just to get there as most of the streets were covered with silt and water from the liquefaction. Our block was fine, but one block away was badly hit. There was little traffic as none could move and many streets were impassable.

We left the dishes and went out to visit my sister who had power and water, and watched the television coverage. We saw on TV, Liz from church who had had a miraculous escape from the 6^th (top) floor of the CTV building, which was pretty much levelled.

It was very difficult to do anything. Mark had noticed the quake in the airport, but thought it was no big deal. William had been at the computer in the corner of the dining room and watched and heard the shelves empty onto the kitchen floor. Jonathan had gone under his table. My mother had been at home and, though rattled, was safe. My brother, Peter, was at work in a multi-storeyed building and had helped evacuate a class of Japanese students and walked them out to St Andrews. My brother, Michael, from Brisbane, and his wife were out with my sister Linda, and her husband Des, in Brooklands, which was not hit as bad as previously, I suspect.

When we got home from there we went next door and asked if we could plug our freezer and fridge into their generator, which they kindly let us do. Fifteen minutes later the generator stopped and Jeremy knocked on the door to tell us that we had the power back on. We could watch the drama unfolding on television. All this time the aftershocks were frequent and quite strong.

So that was Tuesday. I finally made myself go to bed after midnight,

With frequent aftershocks I slept poorly and got up at 4:00am and watched the Food channel until the news coverage came on. I felt half-there. I was numb and tired and so sad. I sat and watched the TV coverage with tears welling up frequently. We were so lucky to have power and a safe and warm home. But my grief was for the life we had just lost. All certainty goes when the ground shakes like that. Could we still hold Jonathan's party, which was planned for Saturday and the reason why my family members were there from out-of-town? What would happen at university? Our group was already facing redundancies, and the stress was pervasive. How would we get going again? Was it even worth it?

Wednesday was worse than Tuesday in many ways. I once, many years ago, had concussion, and I think Wednesday felt like that. Nothing was real – nothing was normal. We went to get Rosemary from the airport. Mark dropped me off to meet her, and I found I had a 30 minute wait. It was frantically busy inside the terminal but sombre. I was not going to stay in that building any longer than I had to so I went for a walk. When I got back again there was another delay so I sat on the ground by a strong-looking pillar, beneath a strong-looking beam and played on my iPhone and dozed. It was nice to see Rosemary.

I had planned the meals for the week, so it was easy after a nap to make a barbecue again. We were so blessed to have the water come on again that afternoon. We were not allowed to use the sewerage yet. Mark dug a hole behind the garage on Tuesday and erected a seat over it. The boys weren't keen, but it was fine for the rest of us. Happily we were able to use the sewerage by Thursday afternoon so it was only a very short-term measure.

Wednesday remains a grey mist in my memory.

Thursday began with Mark quoting James Tillerman from Cynthia Voigt's “Homecoming”, saying “It's still true”. And that is how it is. You sleep and forget briefly that it has happened, and then wake to find that it is still true. Mark had a cold beginning so was feeling a bit poorly, but I felt as if I could do something. It was very difficult to focus on anything though – we went from task to task. We had just worked out a way to empty the bath and shower onto the lawn when we found we were able to use the sewerage again. Mark worked on the church authorised facebook page to find out from the various bishops what was happening and posting official notifications. Later we went out on our bikes and visited a few people from church. It was very tough travelling but much quicker than it would have been in the car. The roads are a mess over this side of town. I wrote in my journal “It is REALLY bad. Really really bad. Over our side of town the roads are broken and covered in silt. The centre city is such a mess it is hard to believe it will ever function again. Sewerage is not functioning for much of the city. Power may be off for several weeks for some people.”

We had some friends over for dinner and Alice and I watched a Chick Flick. A little piece of “normal” in such an abnormal world.

Friday morning was a bit surreal. Mark and I went to turn on the computers in the Stake Centre and to buy groceries at Fendalton New World where I normally shop. It was just like a regular day. I found it so disturbing to walk in and find it almost exactly as usual. That messed with my head. The only things that were out of stock were flour and water, and there was a more limited range of bread. I bought a few luxury items, to keep our spirits up and keep the economy going!;) We drove home through normal looking streets and turned on the television to see the reports of death and searching and amazing logistical feats to get essential services back to people.

Mark contacted all the people who were planning to come to the party to tell them that the party was off. Most people had worked that out, but we didn't like to assume. There are parts of the city where the earthquake has made little or no impact.

I have discovered a new kind of guilt, related to survivor guilt, which is comfort guilt. We have everything we need and only the minor inconvenience of reduced water pressure in the shower and the need to boil all water for washing dishes. (We have our own drinking water that we had stored, so don't even need to boil for that.) Our house is largely untouched, and our street is much as usual, apart from a few bumps. Meanwhile people we know and care about are dealing with houses that have broken apart, no power, no water, no sewerage, no food. We would like to be useful, but really just keeping off the roads and keeping my family well is a useful thing to do. We struggled through the clogged streets to help out at a food centre, but were told they had enough people. I made stew and toasties for firemen, but had trouble getting them to Suzy to get them out to them. There will be plenty of opportunities over the coming weeks to do things. Maybe what I can do is make sure that I am as compassionate and helpful as possible to my students when we get going again.

There is the question, do you watch the news or not? For this lovely peaceful sunny Sunday morning I have had my iPod on and just listened to beautiful music. It is easy to pretend that it isn't real. Then the news goes on at Mid-day and we are reminded that it is. Even as I write this on Sunday morning Urban Search and Rescue teams from many nations are picking through the ruins in the dwindling hope of finding survivors. I think when this report is over we will leave it off for the rest of the day.

I'm hoping that this somewhat full account will help to give an idea of what it is like to be here. It is like living in a movie or a dream, with strange patches of normality. There are enormous contrasts. There are fluctuating feelings and hope and despair. I feel an immense love for Christchurch city. I will not be leaving.