February 22, 2011

• Tracicle and family are alright at this time - just saw confirmation of that on Facebook.
• Sounds really bad. Already counting the fatalities. Having a rough time of it over there...
• So far 65 confirmed dead, many more still trapped in collapsed buildings. Even though this one was 6.3 as opposed to the Sep 2010 one of 7.2, it was much closer to the city, and shallower. Being during the day caused more fatalities. News report with shots of collapsed building.
• So awful. Was so glad to read that confirmation of OK on Facebook.
• I'm very glad Tracy and family is OK. I have other friends in CC I haven't heard from yet.
• Sorry to hear this! Another quake... hope this is the last one for a long time in NZ. Glad #1 and clan are OK.
• Oh no! Glad to hear Trac and company are alright. I'm so sorry for the victims and their families. Just when people were feeling that things were safe and routine again. Settle down NZ!
• Tracicle has checked in over on the Blue. Glad to hear that all's well with her and the family.
• Hi guys. Yes, we're fine, safe and well. House is ok too but we're not in it. :) I wrote a long saga about the experience over there, I can copy/paste it here if you would rather read it on MoFi! kamus: what part of Chch are your friends in, do you know? The death toll is changing all the time - John Key (I think) spoke too soon. Only a couple of minutes before that the Civil Defense head had reported 17 confirmed deaths, and then the PM got on TV and said 65 had been killed. Quite a shock! As of about two hours ago the confirmed deaths were 35 identified plus 20 unidentified, but I think they have managed to identify those others now. We will stay away for another night at least and reevaluate tomorrow whether to head home.
• "One mother had run, barefoot, from her job in the CBD to find her child, probably a good five kilometres." I guess the quake knocked her socks off!
• "One mother had run, barefoot, from her job in the CBD to find her child, probably a good five kilometres." Actually it was that observation that made me burst into tears. She was probably wearing high heels and decided to chuck them to run to get her little one. 5 kilometres running over quake ravaged ground barefoot to get her child. If you need an example of the bond between mother and child you won't find a better one. We shouldn't be quipping about it - we should be sending her Jimmy Choos to thank her for her inspiring journey.
• That sounds like a reasonable explanation for why she ran barefoot, gomichild. I couldn't think of one.
• gomichild, absolutely. As a mother it is quite easy to relate to that. I can only imagine the desperation and terror she must have felt. I'd move heaven and earth to reach my children in such situations. God-forbid I should ever have to experience that.
• No toilets at home yet so I think we'll do one more night at my parents' and head to Christchurch tomorrow. Things are settling down there as search a and rescue have pretty much run out of people to pull alive from buildings.Now its time to look after the survivors.
• Heartbreaking. I hope it feels like the whole world is coming together to wrap Christchurch in supportive arms as you all recover from this!
• I guess this quake is associated with the Hikurangi Trench. It looks like New Zealand sits right on the plate boundary.
• I'd like to point out at this juncture that the Hope Fault is named for the family into which I have married, but is not MY fault. There are so, so many small faultlines running through NZ - the September quake exposed a previously-unknown fault line, and this one seems to be a new one based on hearsay and gossip I have heard. (People have been saying that because this one was oriented to the northeast and the September one was more north-south[?], they're not connected.) We arrived home about four hours ago. I spent two hours cleaning up glass and #2 emptied our fridge and freezer, which had been off because of the power cut. We had a quick look around the house and found various cracks in the mortar and brickwork. There is a 10mm gap between the window frame in the living room and the surrounding bricks. The driveway has a few small cracks and our concrete patio, which had a crack in it when we bought the house, is now a couple of centimetres higher on one side of the crack than the other. So on the whole nothing significant, our house is still livable and unlikely to fall down. We lost some small kitchen things, most of a dinner set and wineglass set, and need new bookshelves, but we are alive and healthy and so are the people that are important to us. My coworker's grandson is one of the four whose deaths have been made public: little Baxtor was 5 months old. A TV fell on him. Trying to decide whether to go to his funeral on Monday. The kids are still fine - I feel a bit shellshocked, definitely more irritable but we haven't been sleeping well in strange beds. I'm hoping being at home will be good for me...plus no aftershocks so far!
• Here's a picture showing some of the offshoot fault lines - and it doesn't show anything near Christchurch but we know now, don't we? Oh yes.
• Tracicle.... glad to hear you and the family are ok... my best as you sort through this.
• Although we get to hear numbers (dead, missing, rescued etc) some of the stories are beginning to come out. Here's an extract of an account from an unnamed ambulance officer - it might draw tears: Bodies were being piled up in one corner . . . I was given a patient . . . she'd fallen from the top of the CTV building to the ground. After a nightmare drive to hospital, we returned to Latimer Square . . . I became a triage officer deciding who was saveable and who wasn't. At the same time the CTV building was burning just in front of me. It was unbelievable with the smoke, the alarms, the sirens, the helicopters and the screams. The church opposite then collapsed following a large aftershock, narrowly missing a number of the fire and ambulance vehicles. Drugs were at a premium. Patients were arriving from everywhere. People were dragged out, carried out on doors, on shutters. Most injuries were severe, massive crush injuries. As we tried to make our way through the broken buildings and streets, a report came through that there were multiple trapped. On arrival I discovered it was the PGC building. A crew had arrived on the scene some four hours earlier and had been trying to manage with minimal resources and without communications. No-one knew they were there. They had already experienced horrific sights you cannot imagine. One held a man, gave him his cellphone so he could ring his wife. He told her he loved her, then he died. Another colleague was faced with a horribly entrapped man. There is no way he could be saved while we watched on hopelessly and helplessly and he slipped away through his horrible suffering. Our first patient brought out was a beautiful 20-year-old girl whose spine had been shattered. She was contorted horribly and was paralysed. She was in irreversible shock and lost consciousness as we went. I fought so hard with a surgeon to keep her alive. She didn't make it. Ad Feedback Our last patient had been pinned for some time by his legs. Crews . . . did every damn thing they could do to get him out. In the end a surgeon had to amputate both his legs. We waited desperately to get him into the vehicle. I drove as fast as I could on appalling roads that we could later not return on. He died as we arrived in hospital. In the meantime, another man had been pinned by his legs by a massive beam. We arranged to uplift all the necessary drugs to prevent crush syndrome. When we returned to him he was gone. The rain started. We were replaced. I wanted to stay but by now was working purely automatically. I returned to sign out and got taken back to my car which was now surrounded by liquefaction. I don't really want to live in Christchurch any more . . And a woman, trapped for 6 hours, was rescued so she could attend her wedding on Friday.
• Ed, reading that was gut-wrenching. Thank you for ending with the woman and her wedding. One bright spark...
• Thanks for the updates, tracicle. As horrible as this is, it's good to know that you and yours are okay.
• Came here from the blue to express my concerns, but the posters above have already expressed what needed to be said. Here's hoping the worst is behind us.
• Yet another example of kiwi ingenuity in the time of disaster.
• I get 'page not found' Ed...?
• Try now BlueHorse, a rogue k had snuck in there.
• Upscale!! Why use a drab bucket in the garage when you can have a private squat in the rose garden?
• Now the quakes hit Japan even worse, I'd like very much to know that gomichild is okay...
• Gomi is in Cairns, Australia. Which only gets typhoons and flooding.
• Thanks, EdArzakh.
• Scary YouTube shows five days of the Japan Earthquake Swarm for magnitude >4.5 via Google Earth Animation. 1 second = 1 hour real time Scary stuff, indeed
• There was supposed to be a massive earthquake on March 20. Many left Christchurch, fearing the worst. It didn't happen, thankfully, apart from a medium aftershock. However, somebody was pissed.
• Ha! We were coincidentally out of town for my mother-in-law's 60th birthday. There was a decent aftershock that night. I was mildly annoyed (judgy Mcjudgerson) at the people who thought a 5.1 was sufficient to prove Ken Ring right, but since he had claimed: * The quake would be "one for the history books" * It would centre on the Amuri Fault, north of Christchurch * It would hit in the morning (rather specific, that) Then we had to laugh at him. Of course, word got out that he wrote a book on reading your cat's paws. Highly scientific.
• You know you're from Christchurch when: Annotations by Ed • A group of students turn up at your door and leave it in a better condition than when they arrived. The Student Volunteer Army numbered in the thousands at one stage, sweeping through shattered streets with shovels and wheelbarrows • Your friends and family want you to move back to Invercargill and it sounds like a good idea. Invercargill is a few hundred km south of Christchurch as was once referred to as "the arse 'ole of New Zealand" by an aging rock star • Your three-year-old can say "liquefaction" clear as a bell. "Go play in the liquefaction" has now replaced puddle-splashing as a diversion • You are happy when the police knock on your door. Usually because they want to tell you they've caught the looters • Every house is a crack house. Some have more cracks than others • If you are looking for it - it's still on the floor. And if you put it back, there'll be an aftershock coming along soon. Thanks to the NZ Listener.
• That last is definitely true. I still keep putting things away and finding them on the floor at the end of the day! Not as often now, maybe only once a fortnight...and I can't blame the kids.
• New Zealand to sneak in Internet disconnection copyright law with Christchurch quake emergency legislation
• NZ politicians are learning US techniques.
• I think the Chinese have more ignore-ance of copyright law because, traditionally, copying was called *Spreading the Culture*. Now would be a good time for East to strike a balance with West in New Zealand - accept that this might open yet another can of worms in the form of authoritarian internet black-outs...