Earthquake update from Christchurch

Hi guys,

First, thank you to Sis and Jill for your thoughts after you heard about the earthquakes here last Tuesday.

This might be a long one as I have a few photos but I'll start with the story.

Our day normally begins with me dropping the wife (Sonia) off to her to place of work and then on to my workplace, this whole journey takes us about 45 minutes but after the quake the journey in reverse took 4 and a 1/2 hours.

I was sitting at my desk in the office when the quake struck and the office moved about 5 feet back and forth and shook for just over 30 seconds. The official measure was 6.3 - BUT - this one was centred within 10 km from the city centre and only 5 km deep. As of right now, the death toll is 146.

Our back room at work

Back to the office, things were falling off the shelves, brochure shelf units fell over, some light fittings fell from the ceiling and as soon as it stopped shaking,

I made sure that the staff got out and away from the building.carpark before we wen't back in to secure a few things, lock the safe and get the hell out.
There were some pretty good aftershocks as we were all standing in the


I sent the staff home to be with their families and said I'd be in touch (this was Tuesday) and headed to pick up Sonia. She works on the 5th floor of a building and I was very concerned for her safety and all I wanted to do is get to her. I did after a couple of hours as traffic was crazy with everyone getting out of the city. I found her and we just stood there and hugged - it was very emotional.

We then headed home to see what sort of state our house was in and we could not get within 3 blocks of the house. Some roads were impassable and our street was under water.

Just around the corner from us

We had to roll up our pants and wade in. The water was halfway up our driveway and had not reached the house which we were very happy about. We got inside and we had crap everywhere. Stuff had fallen over, all our draws werer open, we have cracks in some of the tiles in the entrance hallway and our puppies were very happy to see us.





This is our street looking right from our driveway

That night I got out in the street and managed to clear the drain and shovelled a heap of the silt away - enough to clear most of the water at the end of the street. All that seemed to follow for the next few days was digging and moving the massive amount of silt from the liqufication that had occured - just crazy scenes!!

We were without water, power, sewage or cell coverage for days, got water on Friday and we got the power back yesterday - still no sewage as yet.

Looking left from our driveway

This is the entrance to our street

This is lookingup our driveway, you can see the water line 

Our digging work

A spring appeared in the middle of our street

Sonia pointing to our street lake

our sleeping arrangments in the longe - close access to the table

So much more to say so will add more later - a very close friend is staying with us for a while as her house is totally wrecked and unliveable. We spent 2 hours this morning getting everything out of the house for her and it is probably due to be demolished in the next few days - so sad. Here is a couple of pictures of the cracks in her house.

Her garage seperating from the neighbours wall

 

her wall - the whole house moved

you can see where the deck and wall has seperated from the house

So sad for her but pleased that we can provide a roof over her head. She is a very special person that would do (and does) anything for anyone, we are just lucky that we can help her out and she will be welcome to stay with us for as long as she needs. This is her second home but it may take a while for the puppies to adjust as they seem to think that this is their house !!!