Hi All,
You have sent us many kind thoughts and we are all grateful here for your support.
I had written much of this last night but it never got through to the forum. More has been added this morning. I can only write this as I was only on the margin of the real catastrophe and feel strangely detached, with so few short and quite unrelated memory glimpses of an eventful day.
Picked the wrong day to go into Christchurch. The drive in was normal, a bit wet, and a little colder than a usual summer's day. Did my business in the city in the morning - had to have my laptop serviced and now it is one of those buildings near big collapsed one which still has people trapped within. (at 9.00 am Wednesday).
At 12.51 pm I was in the depths of the Museum doing some research (never got to the Library). The quake struck. No real thoughts - scared - running on automatic - realising there was nowhere totally safe to go. The bells and warnings to evacuate are noisy adding to the mind's confusion. The rocking stops and books and equipment are seen on the floor, yet nothing had been seen to fall. Two elderly ladies are close by, their faces blank with confusion and fright. A staff member comes by, calm and well trained and guides us to the nearest emergency exit. It is jammed shut and 50-80 museum visitors are crammed in the adjoining corridor, mothers with prams and babies, many tourists and some locals. The memory of some faces is probably permanent for me, but so also is the almost calm quietness of that group - no josling, no screaming, hardly any talk. The staff member gets the door open and we pour out into the spacious gardens adjacent to the Museum. Another quake, but the relief of being outside turns to chin-trembling chatter, and then quickly to concerned enquiry of the person next to you, whoever they may be. A few people are now crying through shock and separation from their companions in the Museum. Masonry and bits of concrete litter the path. The bronze statue of Rolleston, a founder father of Christchurch, outside the Museum fell over backwards and his bronze head is now broken off and buried upside down to jagged break at the neck. The two elderly ladies who were with me are now talking. Both live alone and their worries are how to let their distant children know that they are safe and well, and how to get home. I see few locals apart from Museum staff, but many tourists. Their reactions are various. One Museum tourist who had been in the corridor gave me a big hug and laughingly said she was no longer a virgin - as far as earthquakes go! Talked with two Welsh visiting geologists who were almost blase about the events having experienced earthquakes somewhere in their travels. They were in their last hours of visiting NZ. Their bags are still in the hotel, now closed. I'm afraid that the airport is also closed and they will have no flight back tonight. Two backpacker hostels are almost collapsed - who knows how many passports, money and tickets are now irretrievable. The central city was being evacuated as everyone there was advised to go the the gardens and Hagley Park, the open central park by and near the Museum where there was safe open ground. Masses of people are now there. Stories of personal anxieties and damage quickly circulate, especially about the two buses crushed by falling masonry and the several bodies inside. Those arriving are comforting friend and stranger with whom they walk or stumble. A well organised complete primary school arrives, each class with their teachers holding high a big class-name placard. The children hold hands. On the road the sirens are going all the time, police, ambulances and fire engines all going to the main hospital only a few hundred metres from us. This was only a microcosm of what was happening in central city only a kilometer away and it was time for me to find my wife.
