Wow. i will now proceed to tell my version of -i survived the September 4 earthquake!- as at September 5, 9.21pm.
Earlier this week, we were promised snow on Friday. This is not relevant to the story at all, but i though i'd throw it in there. i don't like snow. i was glad on Friday when it didn't snow. On Friday night i stayed up late but eventually my mother made me go to bed at 1.45ish. i however did not sleep until around 3.00. i don't remember the nightmare i was having, but i know it was there. The thing about me and nightmares is that they happen in a very specific way. i tend to only wake up when one specific event happens, and then i'm not fully conscious that it was a dream for another thirty seconds or so. So when i was shaken awake it was strange because a) the specific event hadn't happened yet and b) i immediately knew it was a dream but still thought it the dream was happening around me. So it did take me quite a while to realise what was happening. i don't remember quite what was going through my mind as the entire earth shook. It was darkdarkdark and i could hear the ground trembling. i could hear things smashing and i guess i though oh, it's an earthquake. And then shit. It's a fucking earthquake! And i mean, it must've been big because i *never* feel earthquakes. Before i started panicking, i do remember thinking, exactly this: 'Right. Earthquake. That means there'll be no power, so don't even think about searching for the lightswitch.' i find it amusing that this occurred to me before wondering if i was going to be safe or not or whether anyone else was safe.
After thinking this i tried to get up but my legs were weak and couldn't even take me two steps before i fell over. Onto broken glass and some shelves which had fallen over. i tried again. i failed again. i didn't know which way was the floor or where anything was. To be fair, it was an earthquake. It's fairly hard to gain spacial awareness when you've just woken up after an hour of sleep, there's no light, and everything is literally moving. Eventually, after about a minute i'm told, the main tremor stopped. And i found my way to the door, where i found more broken glass. From here there was much panic in our house as we tried to find torches with battery [fail], batteries [fail], and eventually cellphones [win] for light, as the first of the fairly big aftershocks began. Mum decided that we needed to go to our family friend's house, to see if she was okay. Great. So we're walking around our house with tiny amounts of light and glass everywhere to search for jackets and shoes and torches again. And off we went in the freezing morning darkness two blocks down. She and her kids were fine, and we stayed there until it started getting light again. And we walked back to our house in the freezing morning almost-light-ness. Let me tell you now, no water, no phones, and no power is no fun. No power means no heat. It was really, really cold. i couldn't move. i was wrapped up in layers and layers and layers and i was cold.
Mum and i went round to my grandparents house in the car, even though we weren't really supposed to be using cars. It was scary. It was barely seven o'clock and we could see all these partially collapsed buildings, chimneys fallen off, holes in roofs, roads cracked, bricks scattered, people standing staring in awe. My grandparent's house was fairly undamaged. Photos had fallen off the wall but remained together. Ornaments fallen over in cupboards but again undamaged. A bottle of perfume had smashed in the bathroom creating a feral smell. It was only a few wine glasses and decorative plates that had smashed. Until we opened the curtains and looked outside. Everything was fine, except for one thing. The beautiful Dalton. Dalton is a water feature that sits outside the dining room window. A large boy sitting next to a small concrete pool, the water running from top to bottom. Dalton has been there forever, as far as i know. And there he was, cut in thirds outside the dining and lounge room. It was very unnerving - his head there, his body there, and a sad pool of lonely water there. Poor Dalton has been decapitated by the earthquake. :(
It wasn't until we got back to our house that i got a proper look at the damage. Our house is not made out of brick which is good, considering almost everything made of brick has fallen apart in some way. Our driveway was covered in bricks from our neighbour's house. We've got a broken window, but aside from that, no long term structural damage which was a huge relief. Our house though, was a complete mess inside. The major thing being that my parents had been home drinking on Friday night so there were half fill bottles of alcohol in the living room on the carpet. Our wine cabinet had toppled leaving many broken bottles of wine on our carpet. Our other alcohol cabinet was slightly better as it was actually behind closed doors, so only one managed to leak out a bit and stain the carpet. It's really hard to clean that sort of stuff up without water, you know. It made the house smell disgusting. Aside form that, the contents of our pantry had spilled, glasses smashes, two TVs fallen down, keyboard knocked over, paintings and pictures fallen and smashed, anything on an open shelf or desk fallen off, blahblahblah. In my room all my books fallen out of their shelves, my shelf block thing had fallen over along with all the stuff in and on it [all that paper!] everything on my bookshelf fallen and broken, CDs fell into a huge pile. So basically everything had fallen and if breakable, broken. And i can't open my cupboard because things have fallen and jammed the door. [Note to self: storing things in piled boxes in your cupboard is great.. Until an earthquake comes. Also, maybe think about not putting your box of beads at the *very* top of the cupboard? Or put them in a box which actually shuts?] The worst thing of all is that Sammy has run away. She came back this morning very briefly but she ran away again. D;
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| this *was* sitting right above my doorway in the hallway. then it almost fell on me. |
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| glass outside my doorway |
This is a long story, no?
Dancing was cancelled. No water and no power makes it rather difficult. At this point my sister came home with Tim. She had stayed at Tim's on Friday night, see. My grandparents from Rangiora called my mother's cellphone and said that they had had no damage and had power and water so we decided to go over there for showers and heat and food, despite the fact that it wasnotsafe to be driving on the motorway or the bridge. But we went, ate food, had showers, got warm. So all was good. On the way back to town it was very strange. Everybody was acted different. For a good reason i guess. But heaps of people were mowing lawns. Like, "oh, an earthquake. [...] i think it's a good time to mow my lawn now." The queues at the petrol stations were huge. Everybody was either leaving the city or getting ready to in case of a tsunami warning. It took us an hour just to get our gas bottle filled up. The rest of the day was spent doing not much at all. My sister had three of her Uni friends coming down from Wellington that day. They arrived just before i managed to escape to my friend's house for the night. The news said that an official curfew of 7-7 had been issued, which seemed a bit of a joke with the amount of people on the roads at 7.30 when i went out.
Dancing was cancelled again today. Even though it was supposed to be our final full rehearsal for the show next Sunday. This morning i came back, went into town and to my auntie's house, then Tim decided to take me out for the afternoon. Somehow Margot ended up with us as well, which was good. We had Tim's flash camera and went into the Botanical Gardens. It seemed strange. There we were, driving and walking around in the middle of an official State Of Emergency, just taking photos, climbing trees, playing GPS games and having a generally good time. i haven't really spent time with Margot in ages, so it was good, just us [and Tim] going exploring and taking photos of things. New Zealand's biggest earthquake since what, '63? and we were fine, and we just were. We were watching all these destroyed buildings and had had a terrifying last couple of days, but we were fine.
The quake was between 7.1 and 7.4 on the Richter Scale, which, in perspective, is huge. The Napier earthquake of '31 [?] was 7.9 and killed 256 people. Quakes of 6 around the world have destroyed entire villages. i guess it just shows how well Christchurch is built. A huge fault line runs through the entire country, and we know this. Our main buildings are built for earthquakes. Hospitals were barely affected because they are built knowing that earthquakes will occur - back up power and water is stored so they don't have to go without them, their buildings are framed so that barely anything happens to them. The other factor in the miracle of no deaths is the time it hit. Yes, it was fucking scary it being dark and being disorientated but at least most people were at home. Think about it happening in the middle of the day - everybody would be at school, work, or shopping somewhere or something. Looking at some of the photos, so many people would be dead in their collapsed work buildings and cars, parents would be away from their children, car crashes, planes trying to land, it would have been a huge disaster for the city. i mean obviously the devastation is huge, but we're so lucky that nobody has died. An estimated 2 billion NZ dollars is apparently going to be needed to clean up the mess.
School is closed until Wednesday. A four day weekend? Come on. It has to look up some time soon. Please?
Oh, and on top of all this, there was a plane crash in Fox Glacier at 1.30pm yesterday, resulting in nine deaths. Biggest plane crash here since, what, the early nineties? A very eventful day for New Zealand. Like, five years worth of news withing 12 hours. ):
The media will be having a field day, i bet. Two huge breaking news stories in the South Island of NZ making international news.
Huh, this is a really long post.
Expecting another 6.1 quake and heavy storms on our way tonight. Wishing everyone luck tonight, hopefully we won't die. :/
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