In which life continues except...
Sep. 5th, 2010 09:57 amIf you want to know what a state of emergency looks like, imagine a suburban street on a sunny spring Saturday afternoon. Neighbours are gardening; the occasional car full of visitors drives along.
Except occasionally the ground shakes, and we're being told to boil water before drinking it, and conserve it by not flushing the toilet; and in the central business district the older brick buildings have strewn rubble in the streets, and welfare centres have opened for people whose homes aren't safe.
(News sources: the radio via my iPod; Civil Defence's Twitter feed linking to regular updates; #eqnz; Geonet's Recent Quakes; and various photo/video/news sites when linked there via Twitter. From about 5am yesterday onwards I was on all of these at once, getting advice on how to make a flush-free toilet from Kim Hill on the radio and advice on how to deal with water from a government website. The uni I work at had their website down due to lack of power, but later in the day they used emergency generators to display announcements that the campus will be closed all next week.)
A few places on the internet are dredging up a comparison with the Haiti earthquake. Yes, it was the same magnitude (we've been revised down to 7.0, last I heard) and something like the same kind. But the reason Haiti was a disaster and Christchurch is an expensive great nuisance (about NZ$2billion damage; one fatality from a heart attack) is simply that Haiti was a disaster zone long before the quake struck.
My house is close to 90 years old but it's made of wood which flexes (and creaks and rattles and rumbles and bangs doors alarmingly, and this morning I discovered I have some colourful bruises on one arm) and then settles back exactly where it was to start with. --Although a colleague's blog post reminder last night that this wasn't actually "the big one", ie the 8+ magnitude earthquake New Zealand gets once every couple hundred years, was not the cheeriest note to go to sleep on. If that was a 7, an 8 is quite high on my Do Not Want list.
But then we've only been getting 4s and 5s as aftershocks. Which in theory I'm getting used to (in theory I can see how one of my sisters experiences earthquakes as comforting), but in practice I much prefer to be sitting in a solid corner when they happen. Talk radios had callers afraid to be sleeping home alone, which I kind of shrugged at until I was getting into bed (still dressed, and having placed my radio, cellphone and asthma medication in my safe spot) and realised that I really Did Not Want to lie on my back with my tender front side all exposed to the evil ceiling. I slept curled on my side instead, woken by a dozen earthquakes in eight hours. (Just 4s and 5s. A couple of times I thought about getting out of bed, but went back to sleep instead.)
Once I thought I heard Boots coming back in and eating some of her kibble. I think that was actually just a 3.something. Boots hid under the bed during the main earthquake, then crept into the wardrobe for the next five hours, then (in obvious disgust at the house) slunk outside, belly low to the ground, and I haven't seen her since. I expect she'll come back when she's less scared.
This morning there are helicopters flying overhead and the occasional siren. Neither is abnormal on an ordinary day, really, but they're a reminder that this isn't exactly an ordinary day.
And the wind is picking up; we're expecting gale force winds for tomorrow, which won't be good for weakened buildings.
But mostly where I am things are very normal. Except for the things that aren't, and wondering how long those will last.
Except occasionally the ground shakes, and we're being told to boil water before drinking it, and conserve it by not flushing the toilet; and in the central business district the older brick buildings have strewn rubble in the streets, and welfare centres have opened for people whose homes aren't safe.
(News sources: the radio via my iPod; Civil Defence's Twitter feed linking to regular updates; #eqnz; Geonet's Recent Quakes; and various photo/video/news sites when linked there via Twitter. From about 5am yesterday onwards I was on all of these at once, getting advice on how to make a flush-free toilet from Kim Hill on the radio and advice on how to deal with water from a government website. The uni I work at had their website down due to lack of power, but later in the day they used emergency generators to display announcements that the campus will be closed all next week.)
A few places on the internet are dredging up a comparison with the Haiti earthquake. Yes, it was the same magnitude (we've been revised down to 7.0, last I heard) and something like the same kind. But the reason Haiti was a disaster and Christchurch is an expensive great nuisance (about NZ$2billion damage; one fatality from a heart attack) is simply that Haiti was a disaster zone long before the quake struck.
My house is close to 90 years old but it's made of wood which flexes (and creaks and rattles and rumbles and bangs doors alarmingly, and this morning I discovered I have some colourful bruises on one arm) and then settles back exactly where it was to start with. --Although a colleague's blog post reminder last night that this wasn't actually "the big one", ie the 8+ magnitude earthquake New Zealand gets once every couple hundred years, was not the cheeriest note to go to sleep on. If that was a 7, an 8 is quite high on my Do Not Want list.
But then we've only been getting 4s and 5s as aftershocks. Which in theory I'm getting used to (in theory I can see how one of my sisters experiences earthquakes as comforting), but in practice I much prefer to be sitting in a solid corner when they happen. Talk radios had callers afraid to be sleeping home alone, which I kind of shrugged at until I was getting into bed (still dressed, and having placed my radio, cellphone and asthma medication in my safe spot) and realised that I really Did Not Want to lie on my back with my tender front side all exposed to the evil ceiling. I slept curled on my side instead, woken by a dozen earthquakes in eight hours. (Just 4s and 5s. A couple of times I thought about getting out of bed, but went back to sleep instead.)
Once I thought I heard Boots coming back in and eating some of her kibble. I think that was actually just a 3.something. Boots hid under the bed during the main earthquake, then crept into the wardrobe for the next five hours, then (in obvious disgust at the house) slunk outside, belly low to the ground, and I haven't seen her since. I expect she'll come back when she's less scared.
This morning there are helicopters flying overhead and the occasional siren. Neither is abnormal on an ordinary day, really, but they're a reminder that this isn't exactly an ordinary day.
And the wind is picking up; we're expecting gale force winds for tomorrow, which won't be good for weakened buildings.
But mostly where I am things are very normal. Except for the things that aren't, and wondering how long those will last.