shaky!

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Originally uploaded by MhairiT

I'd gone down to Christchurch for the weekend to have some driving practice and also to babysit Tadhg while Fiona and John went to a party. Those plans were all put asunder when we were hit by a 7.1 earthquake at 4.35am.

I must have been in a really deep sleep, and I wasn't even in the bed I normally sleep in when I'm staying there (Tadhg was having the first night in his new bedroom) as I just felt so disorientated when I woke up. It was pitch dark and everything was shaking from side to side really vigorously. It went on for about a minute but I didn't feel scared, I more felt pinned to the bed and stunned! There must have been stuff falling around the house so I'm glad I didn't get up during the shaking as stuff would have hit me - some paintings fell off the walls, my bedside lamp fell etc. I also don't remember much noise, just a bit of squeaking as the house moved back and forth!

As soon as the shaking stopped, I leapt out of bed and ran across to Tadhg's room - he was kind of awake and half-crying so I scooped him up and got under the door frame. Fiona and John were about 5 seconds behind me. Thank goodness Tadhg has a battery-powered night light as all the power had gone off and otherwise it was pitch dark. We ended up staying under the door frames for about another 90 mins as the ground continued to shake quite violently - the shakes were about 5.5 or so immediately afterwards.

John ran and got the torch and the radio. The scariest thing was when we switched on the radio 10 minutes after the quake and the announcer said that a quake had hit the central North Island. That was terrifying, to think of a quake that big where we were but potentially much worse elsewhere in the country. Thankfully they corrected themselves soon after.

John and Fiona's house wasn't badly damaged - the pantry and kitchen really was the worst of it where food and containers had fallen off the shelves and crashed to the ground. A fish sauce bottle had smashed and so there was brown, smelly liquid everywhere. Some glasses were smashed. Also, some pictures had come off the walls and the glass had smashed. But overall, they were really lucky.

The shocks died back down a bit but there was still no power. We got in touch with Mum and Dad to check they were all ok, and went back to bed. I couldn't sleep and there were constant aftershocks to keep us alert!

Once the sun had come up, we got up and had some (cold) food. The power didn't come back on til after lunch, but we had to conserve water and boil drinking water for a few days as there was a bit of a concern about contaminated water supplies from burst sewage pipes. Fiona and John had just had their sewage pipes replaced a couple of weeks ago which is actually very lucky as this could have caused some serious problems.

We ventured out for a walk later on in the day but stayed close to home. It's much easier to ignore aftershocks when you're walking around! Fiona's neighbourhood got off really lightly, but there were a few toppled chimneys. A brick house close by will probably have to come down and a couple of shops at the end of the road were destroyed.

I didn't see much of the other damage first-hand, just a few damaged buildings and the Canterbury Draught beer factory on the way to the airport on Monday morning. Most of the damaged central city was out of bounds while I was there and I didn't feel like going out to where there were really damaged houses.

The aftershocks continued through the 48 hours afterwards I was there so I felt a bit on edge. Luckily I could go back to Wellington which ironically felt much safer! Fiona and family went down to Timaru for a few days, and I think slept a lot better there.