Saturday, September 11, 2010

One week after the big earthquake

As I wrote this we were hit by a 4.5 magnitude aftershock.The are continuing, but are lesser in frequency and magnitude.

The 'A' marks where that 4.5 just hit


What has become a new fascination for many is where the aftershocks are coming from. It is not the same location, but rather along what was, until 4.35 a.m. 4th Sep, an unknown fault line. Now the aftershocks are making clear where that line is, and it is aimed right at Christchurch.

Was there any evidence of such a fault line prior to the earthquake? No. Canterbury Plains are just that: plains. Flat as a pancake! Head west and you will reach the Southern Alps, which is a known and dramatically obvious fault line, but where Saturday’s big one hit, there was absolutely no indication of the existence of a fault line.

This leads to the inevitable and unanswerable question: what other fault lines lie beneath Canterbury, in indeed any other city/land for that matter? Until some magical technology arises that can detect such things, we will only know them when they tell us they are there…generally in the language of an earthquake!

The image below, on the left, is part of the historic arts center, which was the city's first university. There have been areas of damage to these wonderful buildings, but this one intrigued me most. Just was was it that fell off and made the impression in the grass?

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Five days after the Earthquake

Five days after the earthquake and we have finally had a decent sleep. Perhaps it was simply exhaustion that led many of us to sleep through the minor aftershocks. I would be happy if I felt fully rested, but like many, I still feel exhausted.

As more pictures are shown in the news we see more and more of the damage.

A railway line not supposed to look like this! Up and down, left to right...and as dreadful as it is to look at, I cannot help but wonder what it would have looked like as it happened? The macabre side of human nature wants to ask for a replay on television.

Houses that had looked okay on Tuesday, with intact chimneys, were not looking as good after yesterday's 5.1 magnitude aftershock. (Some people are saying it was a completely different earthquake and not an aftershock, becuase it was a different fault, one actually near Diamond Harbour.) Whatever you want to call it, further damage happened. Our own chimney which had a small crack down the right side, now has a slightly bigger crack there and a new crack down the left side. Am I worried a bigger aftershock will topple the chimney? Yes, I am, but at the moment the cracks are only a few millimeters wide. We will just take things one day at a time...or perhaps more correctly would be to say 'one aftershock at a time'.

As I said, chimneys continue to be an issue for many houses. Builders, bricklayers and roofers are working as hard as they can to get these dangerous chimneys down as safely as possible.

But when the aftershock hits, and you really really want the chimney to topple the other way ... sometimes it just comes right through your house, leaving a massive hole in the roof. Fortunately this is not the norm.

It is time to appreciate our builders as the vital components to recovery that they are. Tradesmen are the men we most want to see walking up the driveway, tool belt swinging.

Monday, September 6, 2010

The Christchurch Earthquake. A sleeping fault line.

The fault line responsible for the 7.1 magnitude earthquake on Saturday morning, had laid, sleeping for at least 16,000 years. This was an unknown fault line.

Civil defence has been practising for an earthquake, rehearsing what they would need to do. But they were practising for an earthquake expected from the known southern alp fault line. No one expected this earthquake.

We are, of course, now asking ourselves two questions, which no one is going to be able to answer.
1.Has Saturday’s earthquake taken the pressure off the southern alp fault line somehow?
2.Or are we still to expect that, one day, that southern alp fault line will rupture into a 8 or 9 magnitude earthquake?

Aftershocks continue.

We are already living in fear of the anticipated 6 magnitude aftershock. Is ‘living in fear’ an exaggeration? Sadly, no.

Between 9.46 am Monday morning and 8.24 am Tuesday morning (today) there were 30 aftershocks. The worst:
11.24 p.m. 5.2 magnitude ( shook houses badly, and caused a great deal of fear)
11.38 p.m. 4.0 magnitude (made the heart leap a bit)
11.40 p.m. 5.4 magnitude (set the heat thumping, the adrenalin pumping)
A night like that was enough to frighten everyone. When we thought things might be beginning to settle down, suddenly the aftershocks were worse than they had been the night before.

As much as we want to call off the party and all go home and get back to ‘normal life’…it’s not going to happen. Not for a while.

GNS believe that the quake had the strongest ground-shaking ever recorded in an earthquake in New Zealand. Whilst Cantabrians are competitive people, there are some things we would rather not lead the field in!

History.

Hopefully we cannot look to history for what to expect. Euan Smith, a Geophysics professor at Victoria University, said:

"In 1929 there occurred, in west Canterbury, a magnitude 7 earthquake which turned out to be the first of a series of seven major, magnitude greater than 7, earthquakes over the next 13 years. The series included the second and third largest earthquakes in European times.

"It is improbable that this occurrence of such large earthquakes in rapid succession was coincidental. There is no reason to think that such a series could not happen again."

Improbable? A week ago experts would likely have said a magnitude 7.1 earthquake in Canterbury was improbable. And yet, here we are…

Saturday, September 4, 2010

500 buildings destroyed

Update: 500 buildings have been destroyed, 90 of them in the city center.

90 of power is back on in Christchurch.

Today (Sunday 5th Sept) we are expecting gale force winds, and likely rain and sleet. With many rooves damaged, chimneys down, there will be people who have wind blowing through their houses, and when the rain hits....there are going to be some serious problems for those people.

Overall, the people of Christchurch have been brilliant. Calm, supportive and coping well.

Throughout last night there were many small aftershocks. Knowing that we could be hit by an aftershock of magnitude 6, each aftershock woke me (as I am sure it did everyone else) and the heart rate increased and the adrenaline pumped. It was an unsettling night.

Cracks in paths can be minor or major, but are certainly common! There are many cracks like the one in the picture to the right, but fortunately not in our immediate block! The dog looks as bemused as the humans.

There is going to be some massive work ahead for road workers. It would be, I imagine, a task that must surely seem insurmountable. And it must be done quickly.

For the many houses with fallen chimneys and damaged rooves, they will be needing repairs as fast as they can get them. It is fortunate that we are out of winter, but it is un-fortunate that spring is an unpredictable season where we can get all four seasons in the one day.

My daughter's boyfriend's family suffered cracks through the exterior of their house as we did, and also in the interior, but nothing structural. It helps that he is a builder!! I would imagine he is going to be one of many people with a lot of work coming in. Roofies and builders are going to be the sought after people, the most worshipped men in town!!! Tradesmen are the unsung heroes of our workforce.

Chablias anyone?
The supermarkets, as you can imagine, would have had a massive mess to clean up.

Think of the supermarket you shop in, and consider how much would fall in an earthquake, imagine the mess, the smashed jars and bottles.

The picture to the left is the wine aisle...not a pretty sight.

However, it is, I am sure, an example of what has happened to every supermarket in Christchurch. There is simply no way, in an earthquake as violet as the one we experienced at 4.35 a.m. yesterday morning, that any shop could have got away unscathed.

Bottles of wine, jars of anything you can imagine, will all have fallen and smashed. What a massive clean up staff with have faced. But what seems to have happened everywhere is, the employees turned up, regardless of whether they were scheduled to work or not, and they just got down to work.

People have done what needed to be done, to help. They have been unselfish.

And, dear readers...I just had to share this with you. Because we have been asked to conserve water, some people have set up a new toilet.

Don't you just love Kiwi ingenuity!!

Apparently the dust from your vacuum cleaner can be good at soaking up the liquid...and you can throw in some garden soil to cover up the solids....yes, I know, not really something we want to talk about!

A 4.2 magnitude aftershock hit as I was writing this entry, and gave me a hell of a fright.

It is still so hard to believe all of this has happened. I am still amazed that our house is standing after the violence of the quake.

As one person said in a facebook entry: Christchurch really does rock and roll!!

Friday, September 3, 2010

Earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand

4.30 a.m., I think I had probably been asleep for all of an hour and half, when massive shaking woke me up. It felt like someone grabbed the house and started shaking and didn't stop!

I flipped straight into :
Q. WHAT?
A. Earthquake?
Q. How bad?
A. F****** BAD!!!!
Q. Potential damage to house?
A. Stuff probably falling off the outside. (Seriously, I did not see HOW the house could survive unscathed.)
Q. Family?
A. I shouted for everyone to "Get in a doorway!!" (forget getting under a dining table, we were upstairs, it was pitch black and the power was out) and I shouted it four times becuase daughter and boyfriend were downstairs.

I have never felt anything like it. Nor have I ever heard such a sound, the rumbling/roaring of the earthquake and the sounds of a house in distress.

Searching round the floor for my torch, which had rolled off the bedside drawers, I rushed downstairs to check on my daughter and her boyfriend, and had no sooner opened the door than an aftershock (of 5.2) hits! We were ALL freaked, and we were all scared!

We all moved to the kitchen, lit some candles, turned off the torches, to conserve battery power, and then managed to find a radio (the only radio we had was on my husband's Nokia cell phone!) that was when we heard it was a 7.4 magnitude earthquake. (Later the 7.4 was downgraded to a 7.1.)

The Earthquake was centered just over 30 kilometers away and was about 10 kilometers deep. The area worst hit was probably the central business district.

Falling bricks damaged a number of cars. The Daily Bagel was one of a row of shops whose entire front facade just fell off!

A state of emergency has been declared in the central business district to give the civil defense people the power to keep people out of the city. Nosy people who just want to look at the damage, and get in the way, as well as risking their safety. There are a number of unstable buildings that could topple onto a passer-by.

We have areas of this kind of damage to the exterior.
We personally have some cracks in the exterior concrete blocks of the house, but nothing major. I was really amazed that we did not have stuff falling off the house...and just goes to show how sturdy this house is! Some neighbors had chimneys that fell down and smashed the roof. Two people were seriously injured, one by a falling chimney, and another by fall glass. Aside from those two, other injuries have been reasonably minor (as far as we know).
Fallen chimneys from the block we live on.

On a night with a filthy cold frost we were now without power. No way to heat the house or any water for a coffee/tea. Bundled up, we listened the news reports.

It was likely that we would not know when the power would come on until an announcement was made somewhere round 11 a.m. It was hopeful that we would have power back on by the end of the day. 

This is just round the block we live in.



There are cracks in many roads, and footpaths. Some deep enough to stand in (so I heard on the radio).

And what is the thing you really really want to do at a time like that? UPDATE YOUR BLOG!!! Post on facebook!!! But with no power we had no broadband router, hence no internet.

The power came on 7 hours later. Finally some heat and a cup of tea! As far as the water system goes, the Mayor has advised that the water is going to be turned off. I don't know if this is so they can repair, or investigate. I have filled bottles etc so that we have a supply to last us. Thank goodness I did the grocery shopping yesterday!

My sister and her family are fine. My Dad, thank goodness, was in hospital, where he has been for two weeks with an infection inside his knee. He said the quake scared the crap out of him and he thought it was the end of the world! Thank goodness he was in a place where he was safe and where they had power and heat. It was the first time I was glad he was in hospital!

It was one hell of a way to wake up...and at the back of your mind you are saying to yourself, silently, "This can't be happening.

The road is a foot lower than the bridge
Christchurch was very lucky. It could have been so much worse. And if this is the big earthquake that we have all been waiting for in this city...then we got off lightly.

Sweet notes

My daughter is a design and art student, and had been working on an assignment on raw sugar.

When I got home from buying the groceries (a necessary task as there was nothing in the house to eat!) she had left me a note...in the raw sugar!