earthquake!

On Saturday morning we woke up just before 5 am to the undulations of our first earthquake - always glad to add something new to our list of New Zealand experiences! We knew about the major fault line that bisects the entire country, so while we hadn't found ourselves in an earthquake here before, it wasn't surprising to us that it was occurring. As there was no damage to our home, save for a few items that fell off of shelves and out of the cupboards, we considered it to be a quite minor quake, and only realized its extent hours later. There wasn't a word about the earthquake on TV (too early for the news) so, not being able to sleep, we walked downtown for an early breakfast and encountered firsthand the piles of rubble where the entrance to the bagel shop used to be. The central city area has the most dramatic damage, as it contains the oldest and therefore most fragile buildings, and about 25 square blocks of the city were roped off later in the day and have been patrolled by city police ever since.

We had planned to go on a nice long day-hike with friends to a forest park an hour or so south of here, but unfortunately had to give up that plan because local authorities were encouraging people to stay off of the roads. Later it became clear that the roads we would have taken were clear after all, but a part of us probably wanted an excuse to be rubberneckers, to remember this one dramatic moment in history before it would be cleaned up for the upcoming tourist season. So the four of us got together for lunch (and afternoon tea, and dinner, and dessert) and wandered around in the warm sunshine of early spring, appreciating the curious little mud mountains that bubbled up in parks and lawns, which I understand to be silt from the nearby Avon that forced itself up through the soil. Though it was a beautiful Saturday morning, almost no shops or restaurants were open, so the few places that did manage to serve customers were busy non-stop. A friend of mine manages a KFC which was, to her dismay, open. She did not have a pleasant day. After a long afternoon of walking I attempted to drag the boys into some sort of intensely girly shop (I believe it's called Truly Scrumptious) that advertised cold drinks, but in desperation they found a coffee shop secretly open down the street. 

I'm amused by the news reports that are coming out about the quake, some of which are just blatantly wrong. We all laughed about someone's dramatic statement on TV this morning that "20% of residences are uninhabitable". While there certainly are some homes that fall into this category, the vast majority of them are either completely fine or report something minor, like the common loss of a chimney. We had lunch this afternoon with a friend's family on the south side of the city and would never have known there was an earthquake there had we not experienced it. I think the big surprise was that the magnitude was as large as it was (a 7.1, downgraded from the 7.4 originally reported) and that it originated so close to the city (40ish kms west, coming down from the low hills and plains to our lovely coastal city). It was hard not to chuckle at a woman who appeared on TV in the morning, having obviously been interviewed before anything was known about the earthquake's originating point, who declared with wide, panicked eyes that she was heading for the hills to avoid the tsunami.

More later - the camera's acting up, so unfortunately I can't upload any of my pictures yet. The picture above is from stuff.co.nz and was taken at the school that I worked at the week before last.

-Rachel