Hi all - had to break this account to within the word limit
She was to have lunch with a 94 y-o friend. Walked from the Museum down broken roads with water and mud gushing from the liquefaction of the soil. Passed broken fences, buildings, cars. His tidy path of pavement stones to the door was a now broken mess thrown up by minature mud volcanoes and gushing water. Forced open his door, thick mud in the entrance hall and found him and my wife and another friend sitting, recovering. The lunch plates and uneaten food mixed with books and magazines on the floor with toppled furniture, pictures, photos and ornaments forming a topping on this surreal cake. Apart from a small cut all three were physically ok. Then walked with our other friend to her apartment not knowing what to expect. She tried hard to hide her anxiety. More mud and damage to old buildings. Apartments with outer walls missing - all rooms with a view. A building once a delightful resturant, now a pile of rubble. Another, an old wooden house gleaming in its new paint and seemly untouched, but its 'for sale' notice distinctly skew and sad in the hedge. The roads are grid-locked now with everybody who could getting away from central city. The small cars carefully skirt the cracks in the road and all have to drive around the rubble. Her apartment building has big cracks and has sunk down in one corner, pushing the pavement up. More water and mud. Her 4th floor apartment is also a mess, and we decide immediately to leave. Back to our 94 y-o. Got him ready to leave. His bedroom door had jammed shut. Managed to get in through the balcony door and get a few clothes and briefcase. Our car was parked alongside a 2 x 10 metre brick wall. It had collapsed as a unit, complete, but lay away from car.
It is now 2 hours after the main quake and the car radio gave me the first news outside my own experiences of the earthquake. I realised the enormity of the damage to a city that I have known for so many years. How do have a funeral for a church? What does that rubble tell you of that marriage photograph on that very site.
(midday Wednesday)
Now back at home after a relatively slow drive late yesterday through the loosening gridlock. Tea and brandy came first. Now we are warm and comfortable in a house that was scarcely affected by the September and subsequent quakes. We are close its epicentre west of Christchurch and its severity was something I would not wish on anyone but some television reporters. I hear that yesterday's quake was hardly felt in our area, The phone and emails are ok and both have been busy all last evening and this morning, giving best wishes as members of this forum have. All are much appreciated. Already Australian Urban rescue personnel are in the broken buildings and others are soon to arrive from other countries. These are the hard workers backing up your real concern for us. There was an international doctors' conference in progress there in the central city- they soon got into the thick of the triage stations - talk changed to real action for the needy. It is a pity that some television reporters have misused the term "real" in "reality television". Such TV is now a bore.
But it is not only us. There were many, many tourists and foreign students in town yesterday. Some are almost certainly dead (the as yet unidentified in the numbers hence the disparity in some reports, for relatives have to be informed first). Others have had a bad time and may need help in their own home towns.
MalNZ
