Chch Quake: a city in shock

The following article is an account of the earthquake written by student journalist Sarah Marquet. She is looking at moving to Tauranga as her Christchurch home, where she was when the 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck, is ruined.

Not even the burliest of men had a dry eye as people emerged to inspect the damage. Some houses were crumbling, many windows were smashed and roads were torn to pieces and covered in liquid.

Streetlights and power lines were down, roof tiles were everywhere and dogs ran panicked and free.

Houses that were fine after the September 4 earthquake are now in tatters. As we were later to discover, so were many families.

The shaking was unlike many of the other shakes we have experienced. It made the original quake feel like a rollercoaster. This one had a violent side-to-side motion rather than the rolling we had been used to. It seemed to toss the house every-which-way and there was no escape from the corner of the lounge in which I sat. I tried to move to a doorframe, but was thrown back to the couch as roof tiles crashed onto the balcony and ceiling panels came down in clouds of plaster dust.

From the couch I could only watch as wine bottles flew off the floor-to-ceiling wine racks like missiles and the TV rocked dangerously close to the edge of its stand. The kitchen fared no better – china, glass and food flying everywhere. Just like the original quake, it seemed to go on forever, though it was probably not even a minute.

Outside, the ground seemed alive. Moaning, groaning, rumbling and rolling with each aftershock. Liquefaction is everywhere, the roads look like riverbeds; ‘goat tracks' as my uncle calls them – no longer smooth and dry, but lumpy and boggy, silt and water visibly bubbling up as cars are reduced to a crawl. In the luckiest of such streets the liquefaction makes it smell almost like a beach. In the unlucky – a sewer. Other streets are covered in cracks; some have truck-sized holes. No road I have seen in my efforts to get to work has come through unscathed.

The air too seemed alive, filled with sirens, alarms, barking, crying and people calling for lost pets. Later, the thump of the Iroquois helicopters joined the din.

It was a horrendous cacophony of noise, something you would expect to hear in a war zone – not the peaceful Garden City.

Amongst all the confusion, one phrase stuck out – ‘are you okay?' Everyone congregated outside their houses to check on their neighbours, it was humbling to see real concern on faces I had never met before. Just as with the September quake, this devastating event seemed to pull people together and rally a community spirit. Within hours people were clambering over each other's roofs helping tie tarpaulins to try to protect houses from the weather.

As I crept back into the house through the smashed glass and debris I looked out over our balcony at the view I had gloated about not even the day before. At that moment I wished I couldn't see at all. A great white cloud hung over the city, at that stage I wasn't sure if it was smoke or dust, either way the news was not good. The Hotel Grand Chancellor sat at an angle. The face of the Westpac building was gone.

Ian of Christchurch suburb Huntsbury says his first concern was for his family, but then he got home and saw their house was totalled – but it didn't matter, he knew his family was okay.

Ian was in St Asaph Street in the central business district when the quake struck.
'A couple of buildings came down, there was dust everywhere. It was quite surreal at first; we took awhile to click on to the dangers.
'There was dust all down Colombo Street, we saw some people pulling bricks away from a building and had a look – there were still people inside.
'My co-worker helped pull out a woman with damage to her skull. Ambulances were rushing back and forth, it was difficult to get out of the city, but I just wanted to get home and make contact with all my family.
'My daughter walked all the way home from Riccarton Mall – she said the roof had cave-ins.”
Jude, Ian's wife, was at Bella Gifts on Centaurus Road when the earthquake struck.
'There were customers in the shop, everyone dropped to the ground. All the china, the gifts, the whole shop was totally destroyed, there was nothing left in it.
'But we're just carrying on, trying to be as normal as we can, even if we do have to sleep in the garage tonight.”

Rayner Wallen, also of Huntsbury, says looking from his deck over town, the Hotel Grand Chancellor was on a lean. The Westpac building, which is almost as high, has lost all its facades, you can see right into the offices. There's obviously extensive damage everywhere, houses around here have collapsed. Our house is not liveable, there are cracks everywhere, but we had no damage from the first quake, none at all, but now our house is a write-off. All my friends have lost their houses. Though this quake was smaller than the last, it is so many times worse.

As I stand on Rayner's deck the smoke over the CBD turns black.

Driving down the hill later in the day I saw tents already pitched on peoples' lawns, barbecues at the ready. Not many people were brave enough to be inside, most were having picnics on the side of the road with their neighbours.

'Get a drink in ya love” said one guy, 'only thing you can do now”.

One woman who wished not to be named was working on Cashel Street in the central city when the quake struck. The building she was in collapsed and she considers herself very lucky to have got out, many others didn't. She had to crawl over a co-worker's body to get out and the first sight that greeted her once out was a child with blood pouring from a gash in his neck.

Everyone is still in shock and most don't seem to believe what has happened; a few saying it feels like they are in a nightmare.
Everybody's nerves are completely shattered, some say they had never fully recovered from the September 4 quake. Now each new aftershock renews that fire. Every now and then we hear a low rumble. If we're lucky, it's a truck, but usually not. If people got any sleep last night it couldn't have been much.

Many houses now have no roofs, some have no walls, some people are camping out in Hagley Park with minimal supplies.

As we still have no power or water, we are unable to watch the news. We have a small battery operated radio, but want to try and conserve the batteries as much as possible for the torches as we have no idea when the power may come back on, the water is expected to be even longer.

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1 comment

CHCH QUAKE A CITY IN SHOCK

Posted on 24-02-2011 15:17 | By jeancraven@kinect.co.nz

Thank you for such a well written account of the quake. My heart goes out to all the people of Christchurch. Jean


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