Earthquake Day
22 February 2011
Not going to go into much detail but wanting to record this for my own sake.
On the day of the quake I was at course. If all had gone smoothly, I wouldn't have been there at all since it was resit week which should have been a break week between the Computer Technician part of the course and the start of Computer Networking but I had been sick a couple of days the week before so it was going to take me Monday and Tuesday to catch up on the practical assignments in class.
I was finishing off the very last assignment that I had to do to pass the course which was a help desk assignment but needed the tutor's response before I could complete it as he was playing the role of the customers wanting assistance. At about midday, though, he left for a coffee break and meeting and was gone for about twenty minutes. That break possibly saved my life, or I may have been on the street beside a falling building when the earthquake hit.
In any case, I was still in class on the 9th floor of the Avonmore building at 12:51pm when the quake started bouncing us around. The sound of the building moving was tremendous and when the chairs and computers also started bouncing around I knew it was bad. I did my best to duck under the desk and as I did my computer slid towards me at some speed and the corner of it hit me in the face near my mouth, giving me a small nick barely worth a mention. Screens fell and smashed and the power cut out. I was calm although injected with a good amount of adrenaline and in enough shock that there are some visual gaps in my memory.
When it was over, I remember that we looked at each other in a bit of a shocked daze wondering what to do next. A woman who comes in to read for one of the other people in the class was in hysterics. Luckily we were light on class members because of it being our resit week. We debated whether to stay or leave as our 9th floor perspective gave us a terrible view of the bricks that had fallen all over the roads and people running about in panic. In the end the other tutors urged us to get out of the building down the stairs as fast as possible as it would be safer at the back of the building on the street. The trek down the stairs was slow and the people all around were in quiet shock too. There were lots of people crying. I just wanted things to keep moving before the next aftershock hit.
We all made it out all right, to a street full of fallen bricks, filling up with water and possibly sewerage from burst pipes and liquefaction. Some people had to go back in to rescue others from the elevators but in the end we could do nothing but start to disperse on foot.
The streets were full of people just milling about and unsure what to do. I was on my own, so did not interact with anyone and was just wary of where buildings might still fall on me. Self preservation won out over compassion on that day. I was on Manchester Street, and I passed two crushed cars that were swarming with people trying to lift brick and concrete off them to get others out of the insides. I knew I would only get in the way, so I continued past them. At some stage, the shock wore off enough for me to think about using my cellphone to take pictures of what I was seeing instead of trying futilely to call or text anyone, so I did. (Click to see full size image.)
It was hard to believe this was at about 1pm on a Tuesday in a city full of workers, students, and tourists. After taking those pictures I continued walking and came to the corner of Manchester and Kilmore Streets. I met a friend there who was going to try walking back to Waltham where her husband was working. He'd been stranded in the sudden traffic and couldn't get to her. Traffic lights were out and roads were badly damaged so traffic immediately became panicked and chaotic. I moved on...
Liquefaction was everywhere. People were trying hard to avoid it but it was seeping up and all over the place and many had already given up and taken off their shoes to walk through it. I ended up trying to step around some, but put my feet into an even deeper amount of it and got soaked over my ankles. It stank and it went squelch between my toes. Traffic was gridlocked and there were plenty of people making an exodus on foot.
Eventually I made it to Wairakei Road. Hagley park looked full of people even by then. I took more pictures using my digital camera but have misplaced my USB cable (again) so will post them later when I find it. On the walk home I met two other people that I know, one an ex-colleague whom I advised not to head into the city, and another a friend whose birthday it was that day. He had been working on the second story of Ballantynes when it happened and he showed me phone video he took of the Cathedral as he passed by it.
I made it home safe and sound, a little dazed and very relieved.
I changed out of my muddy shoes and socks, put on new ones, and almost straight away Stuart and I walked back into the city to retrieve my car as well as check on our friends whose house I park behind. We went past some terrible sights, but since I'm keeping this brief I won't describe them. The images won't soon leave my memory, however.
My car was safe. The house our friends lived in was very badly damaged but still standing if barely and they had stories of very close calls. After making sure they might be all right without us, we took my car and drove to my parents' place to check on them.
None of the fish tanks at my parents' place survived. They were much closer to the epicentre and being right next to the river on reclaimed dumping ground land they were lucky they didn't have much liquefaction, but the place was still a mess and a crack between the garage and Dad's house is now large enough to put a fist through, exposing the insulation inside. Mum was at work on the outskirts of the other side of town and wouldn't be home for some hours because of the traffic gridlock. Dad told me the story of how he was sitting at his computer when the earthquake threw him out of his seat to the left. To his right, my four foot fish tank fell onto the couch as the edge struck the coffee table hard enough to smash it to pieces. Water went everywhere, and Dad's laptop went to the right and fell into it, destroying it. Dad can't get up after he falls because he has had so many operations on his knees he can no longer bend them properly, so he was stuck on the floor just hoping the entertainment unit would not fall on him, because if it had he would not have been able to do anything about it. Thankfully, it did not, and he was able to yell for neighbours who lifted him back to his feet.
It took a long time to drive home because the city had been quickly cordoned off and by then the gridlock was even worse than before. I ended up giving up trying to go home via the river, circling all the way back to where we were and taking the back road following around the hills. Because we would happen to be passing Stuart's parents' place, we decided to stop in there. We shared a meal with Stuart's mum, his brother and sister-in-law, and a couple of family friends. His dad was in Wellington at the time, and my adopted sister (by vehement verbal declaration) who also lives with them was out of town with her new boyfriend at his parents' farm.
It was dark by the time we drove home and with many street lights and traffic lights out from lack of power it was fairly unnerving trying to avoid hills of drying liquefaction, large cracks and potholes in the road. In any case, we made it home safe and sound.
There's no real way to explain how I coped after that. I'm still waiting to hear what's going to happen about my course. I'm uncertain what the future holds for me right now, but otherwise I am wanting for nothing and nobody I know personally has yet shown up on the list of casualties although my mum knew some of the filipino nurses who died at the language school in the collapsed and burning CTV building, less than a block away from where I was at the time of the quake. I count my blessings and still have reasons to smile every day. One week on, I joined in with honouring the two minutes' silence for those who died. In the grand scheme of world events, a couple of hundred deaths may not be that much of a big deal, but it's been a huge loss for such a little country.
Take care and God bless.
Not going to go into much detail but wanting to record this for my own sake.
On the day of the quake I was at course. If all had gone smoothly, I wouldn't have been there at all since it was resit week which should have been a break week between the Computer Technician part of the course and the start of Computer Networking but I had been sick a couple of days the week before so it was going to take me Monday and Tuesday to catch up on the practical assignments in class.
I was finishing off the very last assignment that I had to do to pass the course which was a help desk assignment but needed the tutor's response before I could complete it as he was playing the role of the customers wanting assistance. At about midday, though, he left for a coffee break and meeting and was gone for about twenty minutes. That break possibly saved my life, or I may have been on the street beside a falling building when the earthquake hit.
In any case, I was still in class on the 9th floor of the Avonmore building at 12:51pm when the quake started bouncing us around. The sound of the building moving was tremendous and when the chairs and computers also started bouncing around I knew it was bad. I did my best to duck under the desk and as I did my computer slid towards me at some speed and the corner of it hit me in the face near my mouth, giving me a small nick barely worth a mention. Screens fell and smashed and the power cut out. I was calm although injected with a good amount of adrenaline and in enough shock that there are some visual gaps in my memory.
When it was over, I remember that we looked at each other in a bit of a shocked daze wondering what to do next. A woman who comes in to read for one of the other people in the class was in hysterics. Luckily we were light on class members because of it being our resit week. We debated whether to stay or leave as our 9th floor perspective gave us a terrible view of the bricks that had fallen all over the roads and people running about in panic. In the end the other tutors urged us to get out of the building down the stairs as fast as possible as it would be safer at the back of the building on the street. The trek down the stairs was slow and the people all around were in quiet shock too. There were lots of people crying. I just wanted things to keep moving before the next aftershock hit.
We all made it out all right, to a street full of fallen bricks, filling up with water and possibly sewerage from burst pipes and liquefaction. Some people had to go back in to rescue others from the elevators but in the end we could do nothing but start to disperse on foot.
The streets were full of people just milling about and unsure what to do. I was on my own, so did not interact with anyone and was just wary of where buildings might still fall on me. Self preservation won out over compassion on that day. I was on Manchester Street, and I passed two crushed cars that were swarming with people trying to lift brick and concrete off them to get others out of the insides. I knew I would only get in the way, so I continued past them. At some stage, the shock wore off enough for me to think about using my cellphone to take pictures of what I was seeing instead of trying futilely to call or text anyone, so I did. (Click to see full size image.)
It was hard to believe this was at about 1pm on a Tuesday in a city full of workers, students, and tourists. After taking those pictures I continued walking and came to the corner of Manchester and Kilmore Streets. I met a friend there who was going to try walking back to Waltham where her husband was working. He'd been stranded in the sudden traffic and couldn't get to her. Traffic lights were out and roads were badly damaged so traffic immediately became panicked and chaotic. I moved on...
Liquefaction was everywhere. People were trying hard to avoid it but it was seeping up and all over the place and many had already given up and taken off their shoes to walk through it. I ended up trying to step around some, but put my feet into an even deeper amount of it and got soaked over my ankles. It stank and it went squelch between my toes. Traffic was gridlocked and there were plenty of people making an exodus on foot.
Eventually I made it to Wairakei Road. Hagley park looked full of people even by then. I took more pictures using my digital camera but have misplaced my USB cable (again) so will post them later when I find it. On the walk home I met two other people that I know, one an ex-colleague whom I advised not to head into the city, and another a friend whose birthday it was that day. He had been working on the second story of Ballantynes when it happened and he showed me phone video he took of the Cathedral as he passed by it.
I made it home safe and sound, a little dazed and very relieved.
I changed out of my muddy shoes and socks, put on new ones, and almost straight away Stuart and I walked back into the city to retrieve my car as well as check on our friends whose house I park behind. We went past some terrible sights, but since I'm keeping this brief I won't describe them. The images won't soon leave my memory, however.
My car was safe. The house our friends lived in was very badly damaged but still standing if barely and they had stories of very close calls. After making sure they might be all right without us, we took my car and drove to my parents' place to check on them.
None of the fish tanks at my parents' place survived. They were much closer to the epicentre and being right next to the river on reclaimed dumping ground land they were lucky they didn't have much liquefaction, but the place was still a mess and a crack between the garage and Dad's house is now large enough to put a fist through, exposing the insulation inside. Mum was at work on the outskirts of the other side of town and wouldn't be home for some hours because of the traffic gridlock. Dad told me the story of how he was sitting at his computer when the earthquake threw him out of his seat to the left. To his right, my four foot fish tank fell onto the couch as the edge struck the coffee table hard enough to smash it to pieces. Water went everywhere, and Dad's laptop went to the right and fell into it, destroying it. Dad can't get up after he falls because he has had so many operations on his knees he can no longer bend them properly, so he was stuck on the floor just hoping the entertainment unit would not fall on him, because if it had he would not have been able to do anything about it. Thankfully, it did not, and he was able to yell for neighbours who lifted him back to his feet.
It took a long time to drive home because the city had been quickly cordoned off and by then the gridlock was even worse than before. I ended up giving up trying to go home via the river, circling all the way back to where we were and taking the back road following around the hills. Because we would happen to be passing Stuart's parents' place, we decided to stop in there. We shared a meal with Stuart's mum, his brother and sister-in-law, and a couple of family friends. His dad was in Wellington at the time, and my adopted sister (by vehement verbal declaration) who also lives with them was out of town with her new boyfriend at his parents' farm.
It was dark by the time we drove home and with many street lights and traffic lights out from lack of power it was fairly unnerving trying to avoid hills of drying liquefaction, large cracks and potholes in the road. In any case, we made it home safe and sound.
There's no real way to explain how I coped after that. I'm still waiting to hear what's going to happen about my course. I'm uncertain what the future holds for me right now, but otherwise I am wanting for nothing and nobody I know personally has yet shown up on the list of casualties although my mum knew some of the filipino nurses who died at the language school in the collapsed and burning CTV building, less than a block away from where I was at the time of the quake. I count my blessings and still have reasons to smile every day. One week on, I joined in with honouring the two minutes' silence for those who died. In the grand scheme of world events, a couple of hundred deaths may not be that much of a big deal, but it's been a huge loss for such a little country.
Take care and God bless.