22.2.11 – Christchurch Earthquake (Christchurch, New Zealand)

22.2.11 – Christchurch Earthquake (Christchurch, New Zealand)



Governor's Bay



Woke to a grey morning with gentle rain.   The plan is to visit Ronnie and Ethel’s daughters and then go up the hills behind Christchurch to take in the view.  Melanie lives in a beautiful, large, immaculate house in substantial grounds, and Susan soon arrives.  Coffee and a chat and then we are off to the hills, which are disobligingly shrouded in cloud.  We catch what we can of the view of Governor’s Bay far below, before it’s snatched from our view by fronds of mist, then we drive round the zig zag of road into Somner, a pretty little seaside town, in the hope of getting lunch. It’s nearly one o’clock.



The Pizza Parlour after the quake



Boulders at Somner

As we enter, suddenly the car hits a cattle grid.  It’s a big one.  The car rocks and bounces violently.  It must be a very long grid, I think, as the bouncing goes on and on.  My eye catches sight of a building to our left – a red brick two storey Pizza Parlour.  As I watch, slowly the top corner of the building peels off and crashes to the ground, shattering in a pile of huge masonary chunks at the feet of an elderly lady.  This is no cattle grid.  This is an earthquake!  The wild shaking finally stops.  A vast billowing cloud of orange dust rises behind us.  Part of the cliff has given way, on the road we passed seconds before.   We decide to drive round the town to find a place to park, well away from the buildings.  The tarmac is twisted and buckled.  People are emerging from buildings and standing in dazed huddles.  A young woman helps an elderly lady.  A man stands crying.  A solitary dog scampers down the road, tail between legs. 

House in Somner immediately after the earthquake

We stop outside a restaurant.  The owner comes out – ‘You can’t go in.  It’s finished in there, finished’.  Every bottle in his bar is broken.  A man has a device in his hand, and announces ‘It was a 6.3’.  We walk on.  I notice a picture window above us, split diagonally, an immense shard of glass hanging over the road.  I call to Bill who’s walking a bit behind, to go into the road in case it falls.  As he does so, the first after-shock hits and the road wobbles and bounces accompanied by a thunderous roar.  Several shocks follow in quick succession.  In between the ground has a strange insecure feel, a bit like being on the deck of a ship.  A lady dressed in a crisp blue overall stands bewildered.  In twenty seconds, her little convenience shop has been wrecked.  All her stock has crashed off the shelves and lies in a chaotic jumble on the floor.  She doesn’t know what to do.  We wish her good luck and walk down to the shore, stepping over bricks in the road.  A house stands without a side wall.  Roofs look as if someone has drawn huge fingers through the tiles, ripping them up.  There’s a white car, windscreen and roof dented by several huge girders which have fallen from the roof on the building above. 

We decide to move off and to switch on the car’s radio to find out what’s going on.  But there’s no channel broadcasting.  A man tells us the Ferrymead Bridge is down, so we can’t go that way.  We set off, creeping round the cliffs, several of which have avalanched huge boulders onto the road. 

Ronnie is worried about his brother –in-law Laurie, who lives in the next town, Redcliff.  Rivers of grey water are bubbling up from underground, little fountains bringing mounds of grey mud with them, all over the road, people’s gardens, the pavements.  This is called liquefaction, I’m told.  We sweep up a steep road past worsening damage.  Laurie’s house is a large modern square building, built into the hillside with large pillars at the front.  Initially it looks ok, although the house behind is wrecked, and the house next door has no wall.  Laurie appears and we enter gingerly.  We pick our way upstairs, over a smashed glass light fitting.  His large open plan kitchen/diner/living room has immense picture windows staring out to sea.  But inside the mess is dramatic.  A noxious cocktail of wine and spirits floods the floor where his bottles have tipped out of the bottle rack.  Some of the bottles are intact.  Laurie, who has not lost his Glaswegian sense of humour even in this disaster, comments that he may well need those bottles before the night is out.  Flowers straggle forlornly on the polished table, spilt from an elegant vase.  The microwave has been flung from its perch half way up the wall, smashing the cooker door on the way to the floor.  All the glasses from the cabinet lie in mounds of crushed glass on the cream tiles.  The precious collection of porcelain is just a jumble of shards.  The bedroom cabinets have rocked out from the walls, emptying the drawers, the wardrobe has disgorged its contents everywhere, the coals have bounced out of the gas fire onto the carpet over the twisted remnants of the frame.  We grab brushes, shovels and mops and begin to sweep, crunching everywhere over broken glass.  Every so often, we have to pause as after shocks vibrate the floor and rattle the whole house.  Some are so severe I have to stand feet apart as on a ship in rough weather.  As the mess gradually recedes, we see more sinister sights – a long crack in the wall, both inside and out... The tops of the supporting pillars are cracked at floor level...  The garden has dropped about six inches at the edge....

A young woman appears in the driveway, a child wrapped in a blanket in her arms, two others clinging onto her skirts.  She is Laurie’s neighbour, whose house now has no wall.  She is dazed and quiet.  She says that her South African husband has decided that this is enough, he’s leaving New Zealand. 

Ronnie and Ethel are anxious to get home to assess the damage there, so we leave Laurie.  Laurie thanks us for our help. ‘Remember, whenever you have an earthquake or a tsunami in Scotland, I’ll be right there to help’.

Car immersed in liquefaction

Now we have to tackle the journey home.  In normal circumstances, it should take about half an hour.  The radio is working now and we learn of the devastation which dominates the peaceful, happy, sunlit town we enjoyed only yesterday.  The Cathedral tower is down, people are dead, people are trapped, teams are coming from around the world to help.  It’s unbelievable.  Can’t be true.   Ethel manages at last to contact Melanie and Susan.  Melanie’s immaculate house that we visited only a few hours ago is in chaos.  She got locked in the garage when the quake struck and was terrified as she was to collect the boys from school.  With advice from her brother in Australia (thank goodness for mobile phones), she at last got out.  Susan’s sons refuse to sleep in the house, and they are camping in the garden tonight.  And heavy rain is forecast.

There are more and more people walking aimlessly or standing in huddles staring.  People are afraid to go back into their houses.  Boulders, huge grey puddles and triangular mounds of grey mud are everywhere.  We reach the bridge which is indeed impassable, and follow a narrow road into the outskirts of the city.  Now we meet more and more traffic and soon we are travelling at walking pace or slower.  Everyone is trying to get home.  Lots of roads are impassable and Ronnie has to change his planned route time and again.  There are huge splits in the road and in one, a car lies tipped forward as if it was trying to drive down a tunnel.  It’s now welded in place by the ubiquitous grey mud.

More and more cars, travelling, and abandoned by the roadside.  More and more people, walking, walking, several barefoot, their feet and legs coated in sticky mud.  There are cars stuck in the mud, one being towed out, another being dug out by two barefoot youths.  A young couple pass, pushing a barefoot girl in a shopping trolley.  A young man, still in his chef’s outfit of checked trousers and double breasted white jacket is walking down the central reservation, a blank look on his face.  A man in blue overalls walks determinedly, a large bandage round his head and blood all over his face.  Down the long straight avenues that lead to the heart of the city, I can see tall buildings shrouded in smoke and dust.  There are few officials to be seen out here in the suburbs.  Traffic control has fallen to people who were digging roads or repairing buildings before the quake struck.  Virtually every house is damaged – garden walls fallen, large holes in roofs, windows broken, mud blocking drives, water lapping into doorways.

We come at last to a bridge that is passable.  It really shouldn’t be passable but there’s no-one here to say no and an awful lot of people desperate to get home.  The bridge has been pushed up in the middle so that there is a precarious ramp of twisted tarmac at both sides.  Slowly, Ronnie takes the car up it, scraping our exhaust on the ragged edge.  The Avon River beneath, so peaceful and shallow yesterday, has become a surging torrent of dark grey angry water, pushing almost against the bridge.  Then off the other side, a grinding noise from some unidentified part under the car.  Almost at once we come to a busy roundabout.  The tarmac billows up all around and immense trenches force Ronnie and the all the other drivers to slalom slowly around.  In one place, a road sign has been flung from the grassy centre of the roundabout into a huge trench in the middle of one of the lanes.

And then the road suddenly becomes less busy and less rough.  And so we arrive home, just less than three hours after we left Laurie.

The house does not seem damaged, although pictures and ornaments have been flung about.  We clear these up as Ronnie cooks sausages on the gas barbecue in the garden – there is no electricity, water or sewerage.  Military aircraft and helicopters pass overhead bringing supplies and search and rescue teams to the nearby airport, which is closed to domestic traffic, we learn from the car radio.



Candlelight in Christchurch   

We pass the evening surprisingly pleasantly, talking by candlelight. It’s a strange feeling to find ourselves at the centre of such a major event.  After all, earthquakes happen to other people, don’t they?  But the constant after-shocks - like an immense locomotive under the floor, making the house creak, the crockery rattle, waking us up in the night as the bed sways and creaks - assure us this one is for us.