Hey everyone, as you may well have heard Christchurch suffered another huge "aftershock" yesterday afternoon.
It is recorded as a 6.3, located 10 km south-east of Christchurch, at a depth of 5 km, which is basically Lyttleton Harbour, the main port of Christchurch.
The official GeoNet page for the quake is:
http://lists.geonet.org.nz/pipermail/eqnews/2011-February/004114.htmland the most recent quakes can be found here:
http://www.geonet.org.nz/earthquake/quakes/recent_quakes.htmlThere have been a flurry of smaller aftershocks since the 6.3, at least 30 substantial ones already, including a flurry of them in the middle of last night, ominously at about the time of the 7.1 quake last September.
Our experience went something like this:
At 12:51pm we were just finishing lunch at our home with my sister and her friend when the quake struck. We were all thrown around our living area as things like the microwave and bookcases tumbling around us. Our first thoughts were to get a radio, and get to our boys at school.
All four of us walked down to the school (about a 1km walk), discovering liquifaction in our drive (which we didn't have any of in the previous quakes) with water pulsing up through it. There was more liquifaction, warped roads and bewildered faces on the street all the way down.
We arrived at the school to a scene of great upset. Hundreds of kids all sitting out on the playing field with their teachers, waiting for parents to arrive to take them home. Many of the kids were crying, and the ones that weren't driven to tears were obviously very shaken, as were the teachers.
Fortunately the quake hit during play time and the rain had lifted later in the morning so everyone was outside playing. Small mercies.
We found our boys, who were shaken but not distraught, we stayed with them and some of their class mates until some other parents arrived. Some of the teachers were obviously worried for their own families, but they all did a wonderful job of keeping the kids calm until parents arrived.
We walked back home and went and checked in with our immediate neighbours. The liquifaction was so much more widely spread in our part of town this time, our neighbours back lawn looked like the had been attacked by the mole men, little eruptions everywhere.
Another neighbour lost their chimney, which had survived the earlier quakes, and an elderly neighbour coped well, but had numerous small breakages around her house. We helped her clean up and bit and then she came back to our house for the rest of the afternoon while we contacted her family and all listened intently to the radio.
The water was still welling up from the little eruptions in our drive so I turned off the mains water supply at the street. After about 1/2 hour the water stopped flowing.
Our cell phones were still working intermitently but the network was obviously under heavy load, txt messages were the best option. Our phone line was still working, so digging out the "plugin" phone meant we could receive calls from family outside Christchurch, but we couldn't get any calls to other Christchurch lines to connect without getting an "overloaded" signal.
Once we had talked to family out of Christchurch we decided to head out of town at least for the night. The power went out immediately when the quake hit, and at that stage wasn't back on yet.
We boiled some water on the BBQ and made some coffee and noodles for a late snack before we headed south to get us all out of the quake zone for a night or two.
Just as we were loading up the cars to head off the power came back on, which was good news for our freezer but it wasn't enough to convince us to hang around!
The drive south in convoy pretty cautiously but without any real event. There was a lot of traffic on the roads though, even more heading north towards Christchurch than away which was interesting. All the petrol stations were very busy, queues of cars waiting to gas up. There were also quite a few convoys of emergency vehicles on the road heading north, a cluster of half-a-dozen ambulances, then 3 or 4 fire engines. Scary stuff.
We got to our family farm about 10:30pm, put our exhausted, but considerably calmer, boys to bed and sat down to watch the TV coverage.
It was devastating. Major destruction, including building that had collapsed, trapping people in buildings, some of whom are still stuck, or who didn't survive it all.
The defining image for me was the top of the Christchurch Cathedral spire collapsing. The symbol of Christchurch and the heart of our city, destroyed. I know it's just a building but it symbolises so much that is our city.
I think I feel almost numb about it at the moment. The images on TV and online just look like something out of a disaster movie, except it's not a movie. I know that our community will be strong, and we have had recent practice so it's nothing new I guess, but once there is loss of life the disaster takes a whole new dimension.
Our first priority was getting our family to safety and I am so happy that we have done that, but now all I can think of is all our friends who will have been affected too. I have been in touch with many of you and so far there has been no serious issues which is something to be thankful for, but keep up the communication and support of each other. It's key.
All the news sources have lots of info but we have tended to follow it on:
http://stuff.co.nz and
http://nzherald.co.nz, along with following the
http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23eqnz tag on Twitter.
Take care. Hope to hear from you soon.
Jules
