Canterbury Earthquake

The dragon’s earthquake special...

Like everyone else in Canterbury my Saturday morning started fairly abruptly. Now, I mean it when I say we have a fairly large amount going on. Personally, I am out of a job at the end of the month. My motorcycle and house are for sale and we are staring down the barrel of moving city again. We have plenty to stress us out....

Sept 4, 0435...
The Rose and I found ourselves in separate parts of the house, she in a doorway, me flat on my back in bed. I am the first to admit to being a tad dismissive of earthquakes. However, this is the first where I have experienced freefall as at the peak of the shaking, 1.2 times gravity was measured. If some of the houses near the epicentre look like they have been picked up and dropped, it’s because they have been, literally. After the noise died down a little we gathered enough of everything to survive for a while without the house. Everything piled into the truck and at a random moment I deemed safe (whatever that is) manually open the electric garage door. Electricity was the first thing we lost, it was gone before we even woke up. I backed the truck out of the garage and as far down the drive as practical. The only thing we wished we had and didn’t was the cat.

News
The rationale behind the truck was firstly the fact that it is one of the more robust places to spend time and it has a functioning radio. The thought that crossed our mind was “where was this event centred”, immediately we thought of family in Wellington. This is the first earthquake we have felt in 3 years in Canterbury. We had no idea what magnitude it was. I don’t think it crossed our mind that we had just experienced a magnitude 7.1 earthquake. Neither of us would have rated survival of such an event as plausible unless you were in the open at the time. When we got the news that is was centred near a nearby town and the magnitude we were lost for words.

Daylight
Having spent a few hours listening to the radio and the comments of callers that were ringing and sharing their experiences waiting for the sun to come up, it was time to look at the house. Power was still out and the constant movement had subsided to a shake every minute or so. Even if they weren’t discrete earthquakes, there was movement that you could hear and feel. First of all we looked around the house for visible signs that we shouldn’t be in there. But, mercifully, there were no gaping cracks or holes to be found. To add an element of surrealism to it, there were no cracks at all. It was as if the entire event hadn’t happened. Apart from the fact that the place looked ransacked. Books and DVD’s had been strewn every which way from the bookshelves, speakers knocked over and a few candle sticks thrown around. A glass plate had unfortunately been in the way of a candle stick and was broken. Aside from a broken lever on my motorcycle that was discovered a little late on, this was the extent of the damage. After an hour or so of picking up and tidying, the place looked pretty much normal. The only service we were missing was electricity. We even had internet courtesy of our mobile phones.

Gravity
The gravity of the situation was beginning to sink in. As we sat there looking around us, listening to the constant rumble that was the surrounding buildings being subjected to wave after wave of tremors, we began to think. Luckily I had been able to make contact with my family and let them know that for the most part all was OK and there was nothing really to worry about. Reports were beginning to reach us of the problems the region were waking up to. Buildings and roads destroyed and services such as sewage and water unavailable. Looking around us and the immediate neighbourhood it was fair to say we did pretty well. We holed up for the day listening to the radio and basically surviving the aftershocks. Power returned in the evening mercifully, just 12 hours after the “event”.

The next day
After an unsuccessful attempt at a night’s sleep we set about the tasks for the day. We needed supplies. The quake had hit us when we were very low on stocks. We sent a txt message to our estate agent to see if the open home that was planned was still a go and headed to the shops to see if restocking would be a reality. It was. An hour and a half later we had a full diesel tank in the truck and 10 days of supplies. The only thing we couldn’t get was the gas cylinders filled. Got home and found the open home was a go. It seemed at least four parties needed the distraction, us, the agent and 2 couples who came for a look. After a quick trip into town the gas bottles were full and we were done for the day.

Aftershocks
The Rose had a couple of days of leave planned and I had received word that my office would be closed so there was no rush on Monday morning. We actually slept. Aftershocks will never mean the same thing to me ever again. You read it in the paper and think of it as a few earthquakes that are smaller than the first one and subside to nothing. By and large this is correct. Although in your mind you picture 10 or 20. We have registered more than 250. The trouble is, when you start with a 7.1, quite a lot is smaller than that. We have had at least 100 aftershocks greater than 4.0 over 4 days. Every time you wonder if it is another big one about to strike or if it will be “just another aftershock”. About 20 of these have been above magnitude 5. Another problem is we were only 16Km (10 miles) from the epicentre of the original quake. This means that aftershocks are short and violent. The energy release that would normally be spread over 20-30 seconds happens in 3-5. Imagine lining up a speed hump in the car, then hitting it at 50 to 60 kph. It is fairly disruptive. As it happens, this experience was only common to those with 5 to 10 kilometres of the centre of the aftershocks. Those further away got a more gentle rolling experience from them.

Poor choices
I found out that my workplace intended to open for business just 72 hours after the event. Buildings all over the Christchurch CBD were in the process of being classified as either OK or standing rubble. The ones that were already rubble clearly needed no classification. I took the opportunity to see what access would be like getting to the office. Some of the rural roads had sections displaced and dropped out of them, others rippled badly by the effects of Liquefaction. We saw buildings that had been marked with yellow paint. The markings needed no explanation, a large yellow cross, the word “NO” and a timestamp. I arrived at the office and immediately felt uneasy. I went upstairs to see where my desk and workspace was to find all of the ceiling structures buckled and the ceiling had caved in. Nothing compared to the awnings that had been flattened by tonnes of rubble outside my usual daytime haunts. Nothing was sacred, the bakery, the little Thai place I have been to more times than I can count, the cafe down the street. None of the buildings were remarkable aside from the service they performed for me. The choice to open the office ended in panic and tears the next morning. An aftershock centred much closer to the city centre and more like those we had become accustomed to near the epicentre tore through the central city. More ceiling tiles came raining down and people were diving under tables before they were hit by them. At least one was too slow. No real injuries but on top of the other stressors it was too much. The office is now rightly closed till Monday.

The bigger picture
Christchurch is NZ’s second largest city. It has a reputation for being conservative, old and a little boring. Sadly, many heritage buildings that were actually very pretty (not always the case in NZ) and worth retaining are facing the bulldozers. Downed chimneys are everywhere and houses are ruined. Estimates would suggest that at least 100,000 of the 300,000 structures have suffered some sort of damage from a crack to a complete loss. Old or new, unless the right circumstances were present, there was damage, sometimes irreversible. The effect on the population has been profound. People are now focussed on getting things done. Public places are courteous but sombre and everybody’s story seems to have a common thread at the moment. As time goes by, more is known of the future. Ironically this mirrors our own instabilities of the past 6 months. I would say it will shake down in the fullness of time but there will be stories for years to come, either from the big event or the rebuild.

Conclusion
The only thing that is constant is change. Simplicity is your friend and makes change easier to cope with. In those first few hours, the thing that was the most use was a radio. It was our reliable link to the outside world. It let us know what we needed to do and that we were all in the same boat. Hardly the most complicated form of communication these days. Take it easy, take your time and look at the bigger picture. It could all be different tomorrow.

Wondering what the hell all that was about, try looking here