Earthquake

At 04:35 am on Saturday 4th September a magnitude 7.4 Earthquake was released 30km West of Christchurch at a depth of 30km.

Doesn’t sound too bad – does it? Or at least, it doesn’t really convey what it’s actually like to wake up to a big earthquake.

Waking up to a big earthquake is terrifying , paralysing and altogether quite unpleasant. The whole house was vibrating – which is a very very odd sound and motion. I was just lying in bed wondering what on earth to do. Should I get under the bed? Should I go outside? Should I just wait and hope for the best? Honestly, I was pretty much paralysed.

The whole event took around about 40 seconds. 40 seconds is a very very long time when bricks are raining down and the whole house is shaking. It’s definitely by far and away the scariest moment of my life. By a long way.

After the initial shaking had stopped we quickly pulled on some warm clothes (it was a very cold night) dug out a decent torch (no elect) and headed outside ….

… This was pretty much the first view we had. Poor van, but very happy it wasn’t anyone’s head which caught these bricks. That would *definitely* have stung for quite a while.

One of the lovely things about living in the big old house that I live in, is that it’s very much a community of people who look after each other. First thing was to go round the other flats and to make sure that everyone was OK. (everyone was OK!). No one really wanted to be on their own, so while Mark (a mobile phone network technician) headed into work, the rest of us moved into our lounge to just huddle together. That was really lovely – and a bit warmer too.One of the great things about living in our old draughty house is that we’re really prepared for cold. Down jackets & hats came on. Thermal underwear was pulled on. Duvets were wrapped around – and really, it wasn’t too bad.

I was quite sad that Steve wasn’t here. I had no one who wanted to share my Ard Beg (whiskey) with me at 04:50 ;) Don’t worry Steve, I had one for you too! Another really good thing to have is a radio. It just puts you back in touch with the outside world. I’m definitely going to get a radio and some spare batteries. My little MP3 player doubles as a radio – so I got the spare speakers and tuned in to the National Programme. It was funny scanning through the stations. Some were just blithely playing normal music, some ads, and then earthquake news. Note, all this time (and still as I write this) aftershocks are going on. We’ve had about 50 since the main quake went off.

Anyway, I headed out at about 6am to try and get some water (water was off – burst pipes all over the place). It was *dark*. Properly dark. No street lights, no house lights. And it was cold. Very cold. The few places I tried to go to were all closed.. so I headed back to the house empty handed. All the traffic lights were out too, so it was nice to get back to the relative safety of home.

Dawn came, and with it a bit of warmth. Everything seems a lot better in strong sunshine. We started investigating the house for damage.

Main thing – the whiskey cabinet was intact.

So, we live next to the river, and these cracks appeared in the lawn. One of the problems has been liquefaction, which is where the ground turns to something a lot less solid. I’m guessing that’s what has happened here.

This pile of bricks is just by our back door (which doesn’t open any more). Bloody lucky we didn’t pile out that way.

Now, before anyone gets worried. The house is structurally safe (so we are told). Wooden houses (and tin roofs) behave really well in Earthquake situations. The cracks above are just cracks in the plaster. It’s not structural, and it won’t take too long to be repaired.

The chimneys were dangerous, but early this morning (5th!) the builder was over (he had inspected yesterday)… and he has been clearing the chimneys away.

Olli, our performing artist housemate, couldn’t resist playing with the sledgehammer! Heh.

Here are a couple of video’s of the house, and the cleanup afterwards.

Really though, we have been so lucky. We have power, we have water, we have the internet. We’re all safe and unharmed. When you contrast that with the poor poor people in Pakistan where there are what, 30 million displaced in a dire situation.. no, I think we’ve been very very lucky.