Day Nine

for most cantabrians, life returns to normal tomorrow. back to work. back to school.

of course for others, they are still homeless. some normality may return for them tomorrow, but nowhere near totality.

the sun was shining when i woke this morning. perfect for pancakes in bed, and boy quite obviously had the exact same idea, coz' without asking i was brought pancakes in bed. sitting in bed soaking up the sun with coffee in hand, life just couldn't get much better. it was enough to momentarily forget that in this city and surrounding area we were still in a state of emergency.

i was reminded of a conversation i had the day before about how our city could potentially become a hub for world research. to reiterate again, to have suffered as little damage as we did for a 7.1 magnitude quake, it's pretty astounding.

most of the residential damage has been caused by liquefaction, in , suburbs that really were questionable sites for development. but then so many nz cities are built on reclaimed land, fueled by people's need to be in the bigger cities which just keep growing and growing. in a country this size, with established cities naturally situated near the sea, reclaimed land has almost been a necessity as we have grown as a country. not knowing enough about the christchurch landscape, i can only suggest, that our 'need' for the 1/4 acre dream, encouraged the building on what was, now, not the best place to build.

with such a gorgeous day i figured the city would be humming, well the gardens...and yup they were. the carpark was full, the cafe full, the playground full with families out enjoying a stunning day.

a girlfriend & i wandered through the city, it was still fairly quiet with many places still closed. my first full trip through town i can see how so many think everything is far worse than it is, with the buildings that have appeared again and again in the media not looking great at all. but for every one of those, there are dozens more that perfectly fine. but also there are buildings that there have been no coverage of that are teetering on that line of life and death.

looking at one of the 'newer' buildings in town that is rumored to be coming down, a guy stopped and talked to us. it's amazing how no one used to stop and chat, this guy talked to us for a good 45 minutes this afternoon. of course nothing more was discussed than the earthquake (we're all experts now). we deviated slightly to evolution....but for the whole, solid earthquake.

later in the day i headed to the mall to pick up a few things. i was in farmers when what was a reasonable aftershock hit. i'm still not sure if it was being in a different environment or it actually was quite a 'shock', but it definitely felt a lot worse than it possible was. i can possibly see how so many people are nervous and rattled, if that is what most aftershocks have been like...although the shop assistants seemed to be a bit taken aback too...so maybe it was a bit of a violent shock. otherwise, our house has been 'protecting' us very well!

Day Eight

a week has past.  a very long week.  it all seems like a dream.  probably coz everything is so seemingly normal.  for me at least.
another bad sleep, but not due to aftershocks.  with everything that has been going on i have forgotten to take my medication and woke with pretty wicked heartburn.  
soon after that there was the largest aftershock i've felt for a while.  having not felt ANY quake before, let alone the one we felt a week ago, i can't say whether these shocks are normal, but they are all i know...and compared to the actual quake, they are nothing.  they last but a second or three.  sure when you first feel them, or hear the rumbling, your heart drops, you momentarily freak or panic, but then by the time the brain kicks in it's still once more.
i know that many people outside of canterbury are now looking at geonet to see how big and often the aftershocks are.  although this is an indicator, it isn't a true indication of what we feel.
the rumbling, albeit daunting, is a good thing.  it means the energy from the earth is being released.  it lessens the chance of a large aftershock.  
it was another stunning day today.  a replica of last saturday, blue skies, warm wind but the feeling was a little lighter than then, for the most part.  not everywhere i'm sure.
not where i was, well to start.  the child cancer and canteen offices are in a older house in town.  half of one wall collapsed and there was a threat that the entire place would be ripped in half.  initially yellow stickered, it was later 'upgraded' to essentially a red.  thanks to being in the right place at the right time, i got to be there this morning.
the team were fairly somber when i arrived, rightly so.  even though an office can be relocated, when it's an organisation as such where families can come to 'be' and there is so much of other people within the four walls, it's harder than most to just walk away from.  i felt honoured and privileged to be able to enter the house, and help them to 'clear out'.  with any luck this building may be able to be rescued, especially as the council are now adamant they want to save as many buildings as possible.
it's interesting the older i get the more interested i become in engineering - well from a total amateur level.  having a father who is an engineer, albeit civil, i always detested engineering seeing it as extremely boring.  but the reality is, without engineers, barely anything would exist.
we headed out to look at the local canoe club, which is next to the avon in the middle of one of the more severely damaged suburbs in town.  seeing the state of many of the roads and some buildings here, i can understand why so many people outside of here think the damage is horrific.  in these area's it is.  it's bad.  the roads undriveable in places.
the canoe club has been recently renovated, only completed three weeks before the quake.  the building has held up, but moved, just a tad (look at the downpipes).  the older buildings either side are both a mess, more than likely will be pulled down.  good news for the canoe club, the river should be less congested than it usually is for quite some time.
across the road porrits park, the city's main hockey turf.  destroyed, unless there can be a way to play hockey on an undulating surface.  it will be relocated.
as we leave we come across a milo truck, yum, free milo and some other yummy nestle treats.  nice move nestle!
i'm a tad tired, and i've only been out for three hours.  how people of canterbury have kept going for hours on end, day after day for the past week is beyond my energy levels.  but hats off too them, the city is standing proud.

Day Seven

it felt like i woke every hour last night.  the after shocks were relentless.  in actual fact they weren't, so i was either dreaming them, or imagining them...that can't be good.
i was helping out in a friend's husband's office this morning, so it helped me take my mind of things, but also made me appreciate somewhat more, what people are going through.  it's a structural engineering office, so there were many a phone call by worried people needing assessments done on their damaged homes and or businesses.  they guys in the office had been working almost non-stop since 7am last saturday.  Day 7 and they were pretty exhausted.
seeing the list of all the places that needed repair, assessment, or are beyond it.  this is just a small office, yet there were so many jobs. 
i took a call from a lady that sounded as though she was at breaking point.  her house had been holding up really well until the big aftershock, and then every after shock since then just seemingly was adding that little bit more damage.  she was pretty distressed, understandable after she told me she'd just spend 16 months renovating the 100yr-old cottage.
after i had spent time helping out there i went for a drive to halswell, one of the worst hit suburbs in chc.  it was one of the first areas that the student volunteers went to, and boy, it looks clean.  i can only imagine what it was like last saturday.
piles of silt still remain. workers slowly finish shoveling what appears to be the last of it, off the streets at least.  fields are still covered by the mini eruptions.
the streets are badly damaged here too, similar to avonside drive.  cracks and canyons litter the landscape, large and small.  the school here is teetering on the edge of being condemned and salvageable.  all the students are having to be relocated, at this stage to other schools.  later in the day i see the tv news and it is one of the main stories, anne tolley had even been out to visit that morning.  they have found a site for the whole school to be relocated to, so all the kids will be kept together, which is just so awesome.
outside the main office stood the freshly cut stump of a huge tree, which after looking at a plaque across the courtyard from it commemorating an anniversary in the school's history, had me wondering whether this tree was perhaps planted when the school was opened.
i soon had this confirmed as i spoke to the security guard that has the task of ensuring no one enters the site.  it looks relatively harmless from the outside, as do so many buildings in the chc region, but as i saw on the news this evening, the outside it deceiving....inside there are major cracks.  one of the larger aftershocks was right under the school.
anyway the security guard told me that the tree was ripped apart and had to be cut down as it was leaning over the power lines outside the school.  it was about 140 years old, the kaumātua, guardian of the school and now that it is gone, perhaps that is not so great for the school.  from the few families that passed by as i was standing talking to him, there is a great sense of community at that school so lets hope they find a new guardian and the damage can be repaired.