So, the earthquake
The one in which I get very wordy
Your life changes in a minute.
At 12:50pm on 22 February 2011, I had just got back from lunch and was on the phone with a client, having a rather vigorous discussion - OK an argument - about something. And then the world started shaking.
At first I thought it was another aftershock. Since September there've been thousands. There's a process you go through - tense, figure out if you need to get under the desk or into a doorway and then just do it. This time, I didn't hear it coming. You can hear earthquakes come - they sound a bit like a train coming closer and closer. So I went under my desk, swearing as I went. The phone went dead, so I hate to think what the client made of this.
It went on forever and it was violent. September went for a long time, but it was quite gentle, if you can say such a thing about a quake. This felt like it wanted to pick you up and throw you about the room. When it finally stopped and we crawled out from under our desks, the office looked dreadful. Ceiling panels were down, the glass meeting rooms looked unstable. We got out and into an empty section next to our building. Going down the stairwell was an experience. There are some fairly interesting looking cracks there.
When we got outside there was another big aftershock. I was looking at the Solid Energy building next to ours and it swayed incredibly, alarmingly. Seriously, I thought it was going to come down. Then all hell broke loose a couple of metres from where I stood.
A woman I worked with collapsed. She'd had a heart attack. The first aiders were incredible. I tried calling 111, but the phone system had collapsed by this time. They did CPR and kept oxygen going to her brain and refused to give up on her. I turned my back. Later I thought I saw a body covered in a blanket and thought we'd lost her. It was a few days later before I discovered she was alive, but in critical condition. Today we found out she'd been moved out of ICU, so at least there's one happy ending.
We stayed outside for a while. I don't know how long we were there because I'd completely lost all track of time. I was trying to text and call my sister and my parents, but couldn't get through, The lines were all overloaded. Eventually a text from my sister got through so I knew she was OK, but I couldn't get through to her to tell her I was OK. I finally got a phone call through and was able to tell her I was OK, but the phone cut out after about 20 seconds. I'd assumed I'd run out of money on my phone as I knew I was getting low on funds and had been meaning to top it up for several days, but kept putting it off.
Then we got sent home. One of the guys I work with offered me a lift home as he knew I didn't drive and we all knew the buses would be off the road. After 20 minutes we'd got about 4 metres and I decided I would walk home. Traffic was in absolute gridlock. I can't even begin to describe what it was like. It was worse than Auckland at the peak of rush hour.
So I walked home. Through Tower Junction, which seemed relatively undamaged and then onto the Blenheim Road overbridge. This is relatively new - they were building it when we moved into our building in 2006. I walked over it and noticed there were cracks in it. I remember thinking that maybe this wasn't the brightest idea I'd ever had.
The quickest way for me to get home by walking is a straight shot through the CBD. I live just outside the north eastern corner of the CBD and work in the south western corner. By that time I'd been hearing snatches from car radios and knew better than to go that way, so I headed east along Moorhouse Ave.
Another aftershock hit as I walked along Moohouse Ave. It wasn't too bad, but the fact that I felt it while outside and while walking meant that it was a reaonable size. I grabbed a wrought iron fence of a car yard and just held on for a few seconds. Then I kept walking home.
Along Moorhouse Ave there was what I thought was a lot of liquefaction - sand and water bubbling up through the cracks and turning into a horrible, sludgey, quicksandy mess. In a couple of places I had to walk on the street through the middle of the gridlocked traffic.
I heard that the Cathedral spire had fallen and found that hard to believe. It seemed so improbable. When I got to the Colombo St intersection, I looked to my left to see whether the Cathedral was there, but couldn't see anything due to the dust. Then when I got to Barbadoes St, where the Basilica is, I noticed that the spires there had fallen and thought that's what they meant - that the spires on the Catholic Cathedral had come down. This wasn't surprising as the Catholic Cathedral had sustained severe damage in September.
There was a rumour going through all of those walking that Fitzgerald Ave had been closed. I was trying to figure out how to get home as I live just off Fitzgerald Ave. When I got there, the Civil Defence guys were letting pedestrians down the street, but only if they walked down the traffic islands in the centre of the road.
Just after I got onto the traffic islands, there was a huge aftershock. That was kind of the last straw for me and I burst into tears. A lovely, lovely man put his arm around me and told me he'd walk me home. And that's what he did. I just wish I knew his name so I could thank him.
As we got closer to the river, the damage got worse. Liquefaction, damaged streets, damaged buildings. Getting across the river was fun - the bridge was severely damaged and it was pretty much a mountain climbing expedition. That's really a lot of fun when you're in heels! And then we got to my street.
It's bad. It's really bad. I've taken photos and I'll try and post them somewhere at some stage so you can see. At this stage, I don't have my camera cable with me in Auckland, so I can't do anything. There's so much liquefaction that it made the stuff on Moorhouse Ave look minimal. It was coming down my driveay to meet me.
The 2 front flats had liquefaction through them. The 2 middle flats have massive cracks running through them. The 2 back flats don't appear too bad, but there's a sizable crack that seems to run through the middle of the flats. My flat is immediately above these flats.
The concrete surrounding the bolts holding my external stairwell to the building has cracked. There's a crevasse where the land has broken away from the building is about a foot wide. Inside, my place was a disaster zone. I cried when I opened the door.
My TV had fallen off the stand and there's a crack running 1/3 of the way down the left hand side of it. The bookshelf that was filled to overflowing with books had tipped over and books were everywhere. My fridge and deep freeze doors were both open. The china cabinet had emptied itself and there was much breakage there. The printer which had been on top of the bookshelf had obviously fallen off. Jars had flown out the pantry and smashed. There was no power, water or sewerage.
So I started the clean up as best I could without power or water. The deep freeze door must have come open early because once I got to the bottom of the books I found a packet of mince and a chicken. The honey-soy marinade from the chicken has soaked into the carpet..
That Tuesday night was the longest night of my life. I lay awake listening to the radio. Meridian, a local power company had sent out small transistor radios just before Christmas and I knew where that was. I'd tuned it into a talkback station. Now, I hate talkback radio with an absolute passion, but that night it was the best thing ever. Just to be able to hear another voice and know that there was someone else out there was the most amazing feeling.
And then it was Wednesday morning. HR rang me to make sure I was OK and I think I ended up crying down the phone to them. I don't know - I've cried to so many people in the last week or so, that I just can't remember. My sister rang me at about lunchtime and said that since she had power and water and I didn't, that she would come and get me and I could stay with them. So I quickly put together a bag and went.
Thursday, HR rang me again and asked whether I was prepared to go out of town for a while to work. I said yes. On Friday they rang me and said I was going to Auckland and on Saturday I came up here. It's certainly not a holiday - we're all working damn hard and trying to get through the backlogs from having to close the office while it was checked out by structural engineers - and it's incredibly emotionally draining.
Yesterday all the Christchurch people were together for the 2 minutes silence. We held hands and cried. It was very emotioanl, but it was good to all be together and that the Auckland staff understood how we felt. Everyone is being so good to us. We went shopping before work yesterday because we were on the late shift and everyone wanted to give us things. I actually found it quite embarrassing. Tonight I didn't want to be social so called room service for dinner. The waiter who brought my dinner made such a fuss of me, it was uncomfortable. Nice, but really uncomfortable.
Normally in a disaster, I can deal with clients and remember that I was lucky, that I'm going to be going home to a place that has a roof. This time I can't and I'm struggling a bit. Today was hard, but having said that I've worked for the last 5 days straight and I'm getting quite tired. I'm working tomorrow, but am hoping to have Friday and Saturday off.
I go back home on Thursday of next week at this stage. I'm going back to my sister's place. My RDOs will be Friday and Saturday so I'll use those to figure out whether I can stay at least temporarily in my flat. Apparently the power is back on, so that's great. Not sure about the water, but if I can just run a vaccuum cleaner round and clean the kitchen floors, I may be able to make it liveable. We'll see though. My mother told me last night that she'd come over and help me sort things out, but I don't think she understands just what it's like there.
At the end of the day, I can stay with my sister if I need to. It's not ideal - I've been sharing a room with my 7 year old niece as my sister has her in laws staying there as well as their house is gone. But at least it's a place to stay. At least I haven't lost a family member.
That's not to say that I haven't lost anyone though. My GP's surgery moved to the CTV building after the Boxing Day aftershock and my lovely GP is missing presumed dead. So is the receptionist, the fantastic nurse who takes my blood tests every six months and most of the staff there. My GP has been my GP for at least 10 years and saw me through the depression a few years ago and many other illnesses in that time.
And the cat has done a runner. It's stupid. I don't really have the time or energy to worry about him and given that so many people have lost so much, it seems so stupid to worry about cat, but I am. I feel so guilty for coming to Auckland and leaving him, not knowing what has happened to him, but I just don't see what choice I had.
Tonight I went for a walk on the beach here, to try and find some kind of peace of mind. It hasn't been a good day. I've been near tears for most of the day and just needed some time out. I think it's helped. I'm still very teary, but I figure there's nothing wrong with that. The counsellor at work keeps telling us that it's all right to cry, so I am. Work have made it very clear that if we need a break, we are to take one and maybe I need to remember that.
So yeah. I'm alive. A bit bruised and battered, but I'm in a hell of a lot better position than a lot of other people in Christchurch. I'll get there.
Your life changes in a minute.
At 12:50pm on 22 February 2011, I had just got back from lunch and was on the phone with a client, having a rather vigorous discussion - OK an argument - about something. And then the world started shaking.
At first I thought it was another aftershock. Since September there've been thousands. There's a process you go through - tense, figure out if you need to get under the desk or into a doorway and then just do it. This time, I didn't hear it coming. You can hear earthquakes come - they sound a bit like a train coming closer and closer. So I went under my desk, swearing as I went. The phone went dead, so I hate to think what the client made of this.
It went on forever and it was violent. September went for a long time, but it was quite gentle, if you can say such a thing about a quake. This felt like it wanted to pick you up and throw you about the room. When it finally stopped and we crawled out from under our desks, the office looked dreadful. Ceiling panels were down, the glass meeting rooms looked unstable. We got out and into an empty section next to our building. Going down the stairwell was an experience. There are some fairly interesting looking cracks there.
When we got outside there was another big aftershock. I was looking at the Solid Energy building next to ours and it swayed incredibly, alarmingly. Seriously, I thought it was going to come down. Then all hell broke loose a couple of metres from where I stood.
A woman I worked with collapsed. She'd had a heart attack. The first aiders were incredible. I tried calling 111, but the phone system had collapsed by this time. They did CPR and kept oxygen going to her brain and refused to give up on her. I turned my back. Later I thought I saw a body covered in a blanket and thought we'd lost her. It was a few days later before I discovered she was alive, but in critical condition. Today we found out she'd been moved out of ICU, so at least there's one happy ending.
We stayed outside for a while. I don't know how long we were there because I'd completely lost all track of time. I was trying to text and call my sister and my parents, but couldn't get through, The lines were all overloaded. Eventually a text from my sister got through so I knew she was OK, but I couldn't get through to her to tell her I was OK. I finally got a phone call through and was able to tell her I was OK, but the phone cut out after about 20 seconds. I'd assumed I'd run out of money on my phone as I knew I was getting low on funds and had been meaning to top it up for several days, but kept putting it off.
Then we got sent home. One of the guys I work with offered me a lift home as he knew I didn't drive and we all knew the buses would be off the road. After 20 minutes we'd got about 4 metres and I decided I would walk home. Traffic was in absolute gridlock. I can't even begin to describe what it was like. It was worse than Auckland at the peak of rush hour.
So I walked home. Through Tower Junction, which seemed relatively undamaged and then onto the Blenheim Road overbridge. This is relatively new - they were building it when we moved into our building in 2006. I walked over it and noticed there were cracks in it. I remember thinking that maybe this wasn't the brightest idea I'd ever had.
The quickest way for me to get home by walking is a straight shot through the CBD. I live just outside the north eastern corner of the CBD and work in the south western corner. By that time I'd been hearing snatches from car radios and knew better than to go that way, so I headed east along Moorhouse Ave.
Another aftershock hit as I walked along Moohouse Ave. It wasn't too bad, but the fact that I felt it while outside and while walking meant that it was a reaonable size. I grabbed a wrought iron fence of a car yard and just held on for a few seconds. Then I kept walking home.
Along Moorhouse Ave there was what I thought was a lot of liquefaction - sand and water bubbling up through the cracks and turning into a horrible, sludgey, quicksandy mess. In a couple of places I had to walk on the street through the middle of the gridlocked traffic.
I heard that the Cathedral spire had fallen and found that hard to believe. It seemed so improbable. When I got to the Colombo St intersection, I looked to my left to see whether the Cathedral was there, but couldn't see anything due to the dust. Then when I got to Barbadoes St, where the Basilica is, I noticed that the spires there had fallen and thought that's what they meant - that the spires on the Catholic Cathedral had come down. This wasn't surprising as the Catholic Cathedral had sustained severe damage in September.
There was a rumour going through all of those walking that Fitzgerald Ave had been closed. I was trying to figure out how to get home as I live just off Fitzgerald Ave. When I got there, the Civil Defence guys were letting pedestrians down the street, but only if they walked down the traffic islands in the centre of the road.
Just after I got onto the traffic islands, there was a huge aftershock. That was kind of the last straw for me and I burst into tears. A lovely, lovely man put his arm around me and told me he'd walk me home. And that's what he did. I just wish I knew his name so I could thank him.
As we got closer to the river, the damage got worse. Liquefaction, damaged streets, damaged buildings. Getting across the river was fun - the bridge was severely damaged and it was pretty much a mountain climbing expedition. That's really a lot of fun when you're in heels! And then we got to my street.
It's bad. It's really bad. I've taken photos and I'll try and post them somewhere at some stage so you can see. At this stage, I don't have my camera cable with me in Auckland, so I can't do anything. There's so much liquefaction that it made the stuff on Moorhouse Ave look minimal. It was coming down my driveay to meet me.
The 2 front flats had liquefaction through them. The 2 middle flats have massive cracks running through them. The 2 back flats don't appear too bad, but there's a sizable crack that seems to run through the middle of the flats. My flat is immediately above these flats.
The concrete surrounding the bolts holding my external stairwell to the building has cracked. There's a crevasse where the land has broken away from the building is about a foot wide. Inside, my place was a disaster zone. I cried when I opened the door.
My TV had fallen off the stand and there's a crack running 1/3 of the way down the left hand side of it. The bookshelf that was filled to overflowing with books had tipped over and books were everywhere. My fridge and deep freeze doors were both open. The china cabinet had emptied itself and there was much breakage there. The printer which had been on top of the bookshelf had obviously fallen off. Jars had flown out the pantry and smashed. There was no power, water or sewerage.
So I started the clean up as best I could without power or water. The deep freeze door must have come open early because once I got to the bottom of the books I found a packet of mince and a chicken. The honey-soy marinade from the chicken has soaked into the carpet..
That Tuesday night was the longest night of my life. I lay awake listening to the radio. Meridian, a local power company had sent out small transistor radios just before Christmas and I knew where that was. I'd tuned it into a talkback station. Now, I hate talkback radio with an absolute passion, but that night it was the best thing ever. Just to be able to hear another voice and know that there was someone else out there was the most amazing feeling.
And then it was Wednesday morning. HR rang me to make sure I was OK and I think I ended up crying down the phone to them. I don't know - I've cried to so many people in the last week or so, that I just can't remember. My sister rang me at about lunchtime and said that since she had power and water and I didn't, that she would come and get me and I could stay with them. So I quickly put together a bag and went.
Thursday, HR rang me again and asked whether I was prepared to go out of town for a while to work. I said yes. On Friday they rang me and said I was going to Auckland and on Saturday I came up here. It's certainly not a holiday - we're all working damn hard and trying to get through the backlogs from having to close the office while it was checked out by structural engineers - and it's incredibly emotionally draining.
Yesterday all the Christchurch people were together for the 2 minutes silence. We held hands and cried. It was very emotioanl, but it was good to all be together and that the Auckland staff understood how we felt. Everyone is being so good to us. We went shopping before work yesterday because we were on the late shift and everyone wanted to give us things. I actually found it quite embarrassing. Tonight I didn't want to be social so called room service for dinner. The waiter who brought my dinner made such a fuss of me, it was uncomfortable. Nice, but really uncomfortable.
Normally in a disaster, I can deal with clients and remember that I was lucky, that I'm going to be going home to a place that has a roof. This time I can't and I'm struggling a bit. Today was hard, but having said that I've worked for the last 5 days straight and I'm getting quite tired. I'm working tomorrow, but am hoping to have Friday and Saturday off.
I go back home on Thursday of next week at this stage. I'm going back to my sister's place. My RDOs will be Friday and Saturday so I'll use those to figure out whether I can stay at least temporarily in my flat. Apparently the power is back on, so that's great. Not sure about the water, but if I can just run a vaccuum cleaner round and clean the kitchen floors, I may be able to make it liveable. We'll see though. My mother told me last night that she'd come over and help me sort things out, but I don't think she understands just what it's like there.
At the end of the day, I can stay with my sister if I need to. It's not ideal - I've been sharing a room with my 7 year old niece as my sister has her in laws staying there as well as their house is gone. But at least it's a place to stay. At least I haven't lost a family member.
That's not to say that I haven't lost anyone though. My GP's surgery moved to the CTV building after the Boxing Day aftershock and my lovely GP is missing presumed dead. So is the receptionist, the fantastic nurse who takes my blood tests every six months and most of the staff there. My GP has been my GP for at least 10 years and saw me through the depression a few years ago and many other illnesses in that time.
And the cat has done a runner. It's stupid. I don't really have the time or energy to worry about him and given that so many people have lost so much, it seems so stupid to worry about cat, but I am. I feel so guilty for coming to Auckland and leaving him, not knowing what has happened to him, but I just don't see what choice I had.
Tonight I went for a walk on the beach here, to try and find some kind of peace of mind. It hasn't been a good day. I've been near tears for most of the day and just needed some time out. I think it's helped. I'm still very teary, but I figure there's nothing wrong with that. The counsellor at work keeps telling us that it's all right to cry, so I am. Work have made it very clear that if we need a break, we are to take one and maybe I need to remember that.
So yeah. I'm alive. A bit bruised and battered, but I'm in a hell of a lot better position than a lot of other people in Christchurch. I'll get there.