My Experience of the Christchurch Earthquake

---

I'm still not sure how to feel about the Christchurch earthquake. Firstly, I know how fortunate we are to have escaped unhurt and I feel sorry for the people who have suffered bereavement, loss of property and the loss of their livelihoods. I'm saddened at the scale of destruction on the buildings that characterised the city, though I can't help wondering how it will look when it is eventually rebuilt. Also I am happy to have spent time in New Zealand's second largest city because before the earthquake struck we were enjoying life here. I was starting to feel a part of the place. I had a routine - not just work and the local pub - but favourite things I liked to do and see and there were things I was looking forward to doing and seeing.

Laura and I were both working in bars on the Cathedral Square in the centre of the city. I worked in an ice bar and Laura worked as a waitress in a large bar and restaurant. We had made some good friends at these jobs and there was always the opportunity to have a drink after work. Everyday I would walk from the bar across the square to one of the cafés or shops to get some lunch or dinner. I would then find a spot in the sun to eat it, preferably out of range of the blind folk singer who sang from the shadow of the imposing cathedral and of 'The Wizard' – a Gandalf styled amateur philosopher who used a step ladder as his pedestal to put the world to rights to anybody who would listen.

There was always activity in the square; locals played on the giant chess set, the vintage trams stopped here and tourists hopped off to wander around the busy craft market or to photograph the cathedral. Backpackers to'd and fro'd from the big hostel on the corner which was kept busy by the tour buses which rolled in several times a day. The neighbouring upmarket hotels relayed the wealthier tourists directly from the airport to the doors of the hotel where a porter would be waiting to take their luggage. Huge cruise ships docked at Lyttleton harbour and the hundreds of passengers would flood into the square then empty into the bars, restaurants and souvenir shops. A few weeks previous the IPC Athletics Championships opening ceremony was performed here, then a huge dome was erected for the International Buskers Festival the following week. Giant digits in the centre of the square counted down to the upcoming Rugby World Cup which people were buzzing about.

In our last few days in Christchurch I confused myself by walking down a street in the CBD I wasn't familiar with, until I realised it had been blocked off after the September 2010 earthquake and it had only just been reopened. Evidence of the 'big-one' was becoming scarce, progress had been made since we arrived in December and most buildings had been repaired and the majority of businesses that had been closed were now reopen.

Then at 12.50pm on Tuesday 22nd February all activity in the city was suddenly brought to a halt by a violent shake. The shake lasted a only a few seconds and it was just one of over five thousand aftershocks that have occurred in Canterbury since September 3rd, 2010. However, it's epicentre was at Lyttleton harbour at an unusually shallow depth of just 5 kilometres meaning the shake was so convulsive on the surface that roads were torn apart, concrete cracked and crumbled and brick walls toppled over. Liquefaction caused millions of tonnes of silt seeped up through the cracks in the ground swallowing cars all over the city. This occurred in the middle of a busy working day, destroying hundreds of buildings and lives. Now the cathedral is a pile of rubble and the entire CBD is deserted except for emergency workers.

That Tuesday the sky was unusually gloomy over the Garden City and for Laura and I it was another lazy morning. We had both been working late the night before and I had met Phil and some friends for a few beers afterwards, so there was no urgency to get up and go out. Laura had just gone for a shower so I took a seat by the bedroom window and turned on the laptop to check my emails. These were the last moments of normality for us in Christchurch. Aftershocks from the 'big-one' quake were now gentle and infrequent, I had become used to the tremors in Christchurch over the last couple of months. In fact I thought myself somewhat experienced as I had felt aftershocks from the magnitude 7.3 September quake almost daily including a 4.9er on Boxing Day.

So that morning as the room started to shake it was no surprise. I heard a rumbling and looked up as the ceiling began slowly swaying side to side. I actually took a couple of seconds to decide whether to sit this one out as I had countless others. But after two or maybe three seconds the shaking suddenly stepped up to such an alarming level that my chair began bouncing around on all four legs and I had to grip both arms tightly just to stay seated. “LAURA!”, I yelled at the top of my voice “GET OUT!” ...My vision became confused - the bedroom walls and ceiling were now wobbling around me like it they were made from jelly. I managed to spring up off the chair, screaming for Laura without knowing if she could hear me in the shower room down the corridor as the deafening rumbling shook through the house.

The bed was between me and the door and as I launched myself over it – BOOM! - the main wall collapsed into the room and the air immediately turned to dust. I got a hand onto the door handle and threw myself out into the central hallway still screaming “Laura!” and to my relief she came tearing out the shower room holding a towel around her, the hallway swaying around us. It is difficult to run in a straight line and even harder to grab an object like a door handle when everything is moving around you, but in a couple of seconds we were out the front door and into the open air and we stood aghast as the rumbling subsided. I was in shock for several seconds, it felt like my mouth was filled with dust. Once I recovered my breath I went back into the house and banged on the other three bedroom doors, yelling for anybody that might still be in there, but there were no replies. I was back outside again before the first aftershock hit.

The house was still standing as the interior walls held up the ceilings and two wooden outer walls remained, supporting the roof. The outer brick walls had both collapsed into the house, completely on our side and partially on the other, so that the rooms on each side of the house were exposed. Not that there was anything left of the two bedrooms on our side of the house, they were filled with bricks, rubble and dust with the odd piece of furniture sticking out, burying most of our possesions. The neighbouring house was in exactly the same condition and now our room opened up directly into this opposing house, so that I could see the pictures hanging on the walls. Luckily this house was empty as a red notice had been hung on the front door, indicating it has been condemned since the September quake. I reached through my bedroom window and pulled out my laptop, my most treasured possession as I have all my photos and music stored on it. It was covered in dust and wouldn't turn on, though now it is fine as I type this on it.

The school opposite was a wooden building so it remained standing, though the screams of the school children filled the air in the few minutes after the quake. The noise from the school was soon drowned out by sirens which echoed around the city (these didn't seem to cease for the next few days). Two ladies from neighbouring houses came running over to ask if we were alright and if anybody was trapped inside. I thought not and Laura said she was sure the house was empty when she had got up. One of the ladies gave Laura some clothes as she was still in just a towel. I looked down the street our house was on and saw the backpackers hostel, Stonehurst, was leaning at an impossible angle with an outer wall missing exposing beds, sinks and backpacks. It was surrounded by the flashing lights of fire engines and ambulances. Seeing the damage on our street it dawned on us that this quake would surely have killed people. I wanted to call my friends but both our phones were buried in the house.

As Laura and I stood out on the driveway people began streaming past in all conditions to escape the CBD. People looked scared and some were hurt. I went around to the back of our house to see if the outside tap was working to wash off the dust and also the conditioner which was still in Laura's hair, but on my way over some rubble I trod on a nail which went into my foot. It started to bleed a lot but a neighbour had a first aid kit and cleaned and bandaged it. We were relieved to be joined by the Argentinian couple from the room opposite, they told us they had been in the supermarket when the quake struck and although the contents of the shelves came down the place had remained standing, but they said buildings had collapsed all over town. They let me borrow their mobile phone to call Phil as mine was under the rubble, but the networks were down and I began to panic - I knew he had been at work in the CBD.

Then another aftershock hit and it sounded as if a jet plane passed immediately overhead as a giant dust cloud came billowing from the direction of the Stonehurst hostel. People ran screaming down the street from the site but were soon overtaken and swallowed up by the dust. For a few terrifying seconds we thought Stonehurst had collapsed with who knows how many people still inside and so we started to run towards the dust, then thought better of it as it began to envelop us. We all pulled our shirts up over our faces to stop breathing it in. The dust cleared quickly and we could see Stonehurst still standing (just about), and we were thankful to learn from somebody that it was Charlie Browns Hostel that had collapsed further down the street, a big four story building which was also made vacant after the September quake.

We decided to head to Latimer Square, one block away, as this was a green open space with no tall buildings and we thought Phil may have gone there. It seemed like half of Christchurch was there, many were injured stretched out on the grass; some receiving treatment, some not. People were crying, some were searching frantically through the crowd for a face they knew, some just sat on the grass looking shocked. It was horrible, the place was chaotic and the many buildings surrounding the park were devastated. We didn't know at the time but many of the injured people had probably just escaped the huge CTV building another block away from Latimer Square, which had completely collapsed, trapping many inside.

There was little chance of finding Phil here so we went back to what was left of our house. When we got back we were incredibly relieved to see Phil walking down the street toward us. The restaurant he was in had just about stood up to the quake though it was badly damaged. He was in the kitchen when it struck and said the large commercial appliances came away from the walls and rocked around the room making it difficult to escape. He told us that the cathedral had collapsed which was shocking and I feared for my colleagues at the bar and at Laura's bar. We were soon joined by the German student who had the room in the back corner of our house, she had been at the university. That left only the new couple unaccounted for. They had moved into the room next door to Laura and I two days earlier and I had not even met them, Laura had briefly. We didn't know their names.

From the streets close to the house we could see how the Christchurch skyline had completely changed. Many buildings that were standing seemed poised to topple, including one of the tallest buildings, The Grand Chancellor Hotel. Smoke had began to mingle with the dust that layering in the air. Several helicopters were hovering above us, but two in particular were noticeable as they raced over the city, each carrying a huge bucket filled with water which they would then dump on a burning building close to us. It turned out it was the remains of the CTV building that had caught fire and rescue work must have been hindered as there was a great risk of the Grand Chancellor Hotel collapsing nearby.

The helicopter was relaying between the CTV building and the river, where it was refilling the bucket. The skill of the pilot was awesome, the full bucket must have weighed many tonnes as it hung twenty metres below the helicopter by a chain. A couple of friends from work came to check if we were alright, so we all headed down to the river to watch the helicopter. On the short walk we saw all of the brick houses, shops and takeaways had been damaged or destroyed and many cars on the road had been crushed by these collapsed buildings.

The normally crystal clear waters of the Avon river were now flowing brown and it had burst it's banks due to all the broken sewerage and water pipes. We watched as the helicopter descended and dunked the bucket into the rapidly flowing water. It then hovered as the bucket looked to be taken off in the current, but the chopper took the strain until it was refilled. The chopper then ascended, raising the heavy bucket out of the river then swinging it out as the pilot banked and arced off in the direction of the smoke which now streaked across the city sky.

Late in the afternoon our landlady came by with some help and we pulled our bags out from the rubble and moved to a different house she owned on a neighbouring street. The new couple from our house still hadn't returned and it looked as if all their bags and possessions were in their bedroom, however, the room shared the same outer brick wall that collapsed into our bedroom and everything was buried under bricks. That evening a search and rescue team visited us, they were checking the neighbourhood house by house. I told them the couple were unaccounted for so they took torches and a search dog and confirmed the place was empty.

Laura and I slept very little that night, though the new house was supposed to be safe as it had no brick walls, however the brick chimney had collapsed through the ceiling of the lounge. Every time the room began to shake from another aftershock we jumped out of bed and sprinted outside into the rain. The night sky was a foreboding dirty grey-brown, full of rain, dust and smoke which was occasionally pierced by an orange beam of a searchlight.

The next morning the new couple still hadn't returned to get their bags, so I picked through the rubble in their room and found some paperwork with their names on, then phoned the Red Cross and reported them as missing. Laura was upset, but I thought it possible they may have returned from a day trip and seen the devastation in the city or the condition of the house and decided to flee, abandoning their possessions. We grabbed their laptops (one was crushed) and locked them in the landlady's shed as the house was open to looters. The people in the new house were in a sombre mood as a friend and neighbour – an English lad – was also missing and word had come back to us that the building where he was working had collapsed.

The CBD had been closed and evacuated up to Latimer Square, meaning we were not forced to leave our street though it was closed to any non-residents. Our house, like the rest of the city, had no power or running water and the toilets were already becoming unusable. We were advised to leave Christchurch as soon as possible on the TV and Radio, so we promptly brought forward our camper van rental to Friday the 25th February (two days time). One house on our street had power, so we all crowded around their TV watching the news and saw footage of crushed cars and collapsed houses filmed from the corner of our street. The TV footage increased the tension as they were showing continuous images of buildings collapsing, injured people and interviews with relatives of the missing. It was hard to recognise some of the streets and buildings that were being beamed into the living room, such was the scale of destruction. The channel showed coverage of the earthquake from around the world including the BBC. I recognised the British journalist's voice as he reported on the footage and it made me think of home and confirmed the grim reality of the situation in Christchurch.

On the streets bulldozers on the back of trucks and military vehicles were now charging around, some with police escorts. Military personnel were manning road blocks on all the main Avenues. A six o'clock curfew was in place, any civilians on the streets after this time would be arrested for their own safety and also to prevent risk and looting. The people remaining in the houses on our street all grouped together to share resources and we cooked a barbecue that evening as without power fresh food would soon perish. Although overall the mood was anxious, Laura and I talked to some good people that ordinarily we would never have met. Then the rumbling would begin again signalling another aftershock and all conversation would stop as people waited to see if this was another big one, then as it subsided we'd laugh it off nervously. These aftershocks continued throughout the evening and through the night. A few of the girls from the street were sleeping outside as they were too nervous to sleep under a roof. My biggest worry was the teetering Grand Chancellor Hotel collapsing on the still burning remains of the CTV building, which would send burning embers into the air. If this occurred our timber house would be particularly vulnerable as we were only a couple of blocks away.

The next day, Thursday the 24th of February, we went back into the remains of our old house and managed to pull virtually all our possessions out from under the bricks. Most of the stuff was OK (though covered in dust) which was a real bonus as I had pretty much resigned myself to losing everything immediately after the quake. At the time it had seemed perverse to worry about possessions when there were people trapped all over the city. We got as much food together as we could carry from the abandoned house, then spent one more night in the stricken city then left the following morning. We had to walk to the edge of the CBD carrying all our bags as the military would not allow Phil into the restricted zone as he lived outside in the suburbs. Most of the petrol stations were empty, though Phil had found somewhere still selling the night before, so he dropped us at the van rental place and our road trip started here.

Everybody you speak to who was in Christchurch that afternoon has a story about how they could or should have been somewhere else – somewhere where a building collapsed or people were killed. Whether you escaped or not was purely random, the quake was an act of nature and if you escaped unhurt you could consider yourself lucky, as people were killed at work, at home, driving in their cars and parked on the street. We found out that the new couple from the room next to ours were not so lucky as they suffered severe injuries, though if they had been in their bedroom when the wall collapsed they may never have got out. Laura and I both agree that we never really feared for our lives during the quake – there was not time. There was a mad scramble to escape the collapsing house, then the shock kicked in, then there was just fear for our friends. It was an experience we will never forget, though fortunately for us it was not a life changing experience as it was for so many.

---

Photos

Our bedroom
The view from the doorway. The aircon unit fell in (bottom right) and crushed the spare bed. You can see into the neighbors house

Outside looking in
The view from the outside looking in to our bedroom

Our bedroom
I was sat at the right of the desk by the window when the quake struck

The house
Our house from the front - look at the left hand wall - its gone! The timber walls remained standing