A shaky day
Apparently power is back on at our place, but Orion has just made the following statement:
The network remains fragile particularly in the New Brighton area as we are using back-up systems following damage at Transpower’s Bromley substation. Therefore customers in the New Brighton area should prepare for a night without power whether they have a power supply at the moment or not.
So we won't be going back over there this evening. The kids are all in bed now anyway so there's no point in disturbing them again.
All I can say is that I'm pleased that I did two things earlier today. First, I took the kids to the Cadbury snow globe in Hagley Park, which they thought was awesome. Lots of fake snow etc and free chocolate on the way out - always a good thing. Then I took myself off to the doctor because I have a weird thing with inflamed lumps all under my scalp. The doctor was extremely puzzled by it. He ruled out meningitis because while I had a high fever and the inflammation I had no other symptoms and was, in his words, 'looking too healthy' to have it. It's acting like a sinus infection, but around the wrong side of my head. Anyway, as well as the constant flow of quakes through here I'm also going through that hot/cold/clammy thing you get with fevers. It just adds a certain something to the whole experience :D
I hadn't realised how bad the first quake was because we were actually driving back from the doctor when it hit. I didn't even realise it was a quake; just thought the car was driving over bumpy roads. I should have realised we were on the wrong side of town for that, but it didn't even occur to me. I started getting all these texts asking if I was okay and I was responding about the doctor because I hadn't clicked yet. We got back to my parents' place, where I'd left the kids, and discovered that there had been two decent quakes and Taylor in particular was terrified. Cellphones weren't working properly and I couldn't seem to get twitter to work -- or rather I could on my timeline, but I couldn't get the #eqnz hashtag up which was frustrating. My mother and I went into the city to get Anthony from work and while we were on our way to check our house for damage the 6.0 hit. It was really violent, shaking the car from side to side so much I wasn't sure we were going to stay on the road. All the cars on that road stopped while it was happening and we watched an elderly man get thrown off his feet. It was pretty intense. Then the closer we got to our house the liquefaction started up. It was pretty gross on our street even, but again at our end of the street it was all clear. I do appreciate that we live on the one strip of land in the east that appears to not liquefy during these things.
At our house the mess was pretty bad. It was actually the worst damage contents-wise we've had from any of the quakes. All our glasses were on the floor and broken - the cupboard had flown open and dumped them all out and there were several bookcases tipped over. Thankfully the furniture and the electronics were all still okay and when it gets down to it glasses and plates are replaceable reasonably cheaply so not too bad. Overall, we were lucky once again. I mean, it's a mess over there and it's going to suck to clean it all up, but at least it won't be an expensive exercise. We have insurance so it is all replaceable but the time and stress it would involve is just too much. So I'm glad we don't need to deal with it.
I'm glad we're not at home. While we were over there several large ish shakes hit and they were all violent. The biggest ones today were centred around where I live (the 5.8 was out to sea by our place and the 6.0 was in South New Brighton) so it's a lot stronger there. I actually felt threatened being in our house. It's not fun here and I've been jumping every time one hits here but it's better than it is at home.
The scientists are saying that we could be in for this sort of thing for years. The quakes aren't following a normal aftershock sequence so they just can't predict what will happen and when. It makes living here a real challenge now :( and who knows when or even if insurance companies will be comfortable insuring the city again. We can't rebuild anything (not houses or businesses) until insurance will insure again, so this is just ... really bad news.
Anyway, I'm all shaky and clammy again so I'm going to go take a warmish bath and go to bed.