I woke up with Karl jumping out of bed, saying "it's an earthquake!" For a split second, I thought of staying in bed as the earthquakes are usually small and over in seconds but it was getting louder and more shaky. I jumped out of bed too and we grabbed the kids. I was under the door frame with Tristan who was still not properly awake. The whole house was violently heaving and there was long low hum and the noise of everything shaking about. So many thoughts go through your mind. I remembered the red cross person in form 1 saying Christchurch will have big earthquake in your lifetime. This had to be it. Then there was relief that the house was still standing and we were all okay. We stayed under the doorframe. Tristan was now shivering with the shock. It was pitch black as the power had gone off.
Then the after shocks started happening. You would hear the low hum and then it would hit, the house lurching and creaking once again. Each time we would pause and wait, get to the door frame, it was a bad one or just wait and see if it was getting worse.
Miraculously we had very little damage. Things we thought would have fallen were still in their place. We took a mattress out to the lounge with the duvets. We got a kettle on the camp stove heating up some water for a cup of tea. By now we had found the torches and lit a candle. Every aftershock we held the candle while it passed. Karl said to put the heater on as it was really cold. I hadn't even noticed. Then we went outside and it was freezing but the sky was amazing. Stars staring back at us unchanged but now we could see them. No light from the city showed a full, brilliant sky of stars and the hills were completely dark apart from sugarloaf. We checked on our neighbour and he was fine. We were glad to have heating that wasn't reliant on electricity and the lounge was getting nice and warm. In the glow of the torch light were Tristan's two big brown eyes, everytime an aftershock hit.
The text messages started coming. From outside the city they said buildings had collapsed. We replied, no they haven't it's not that bad. But we were quite wrong. We made porridge on the cob oven. We now had the internet via the iphone and realised just how bad things were. We turned the radio on in the car in the garage and began to hear what it was really like.
Daybreak was a relief but also strange as now the water had stopped and we still had no power. What to do? It felt wrong to do normal things but we tidied up, pushed things, that hadn't fallen back from the edge where they had shuffled.
Walking out to the street, you couldn't see any damage. It was surreal. Had it really happened?
We drove across the city to see if our business was okay and it too, had miraculously come through pretty much unscathed. The power was even back on there and the roads were busy and many people were walking around. Over there, you couldn't even really feel the aftershocks.
Back home, we still didn't have any power but we did have water back and you could feel the aftershocks. Everytime the kids dived under the table. Everyone else paused, waited and then carried on what they were doing. It was tough on the nerves the low hum warning of what was to come.
We were tired and the nerves were frazzled, even just down the road, chimneys had fallen and the weird light grey mud had bubbled up out of the ground forming little volcanic circles. It seemed so random who had suffered and who was fine.
Saturday night was hard, the aftershocks were still coming but we finally had power, which was a relief. The kids were too terrified to go to sleep and just after we had calmed them down, another aftershock would shake them up again. In the end we all slept in our room, waking up to the larger aftershocks.
Sunday was even stranger as we seemed to be almost normal but we had to remember to boil the water and there was still the aftershocks, which we had got almost blase to now. Quakes that, had we not experienced the big one, would have had us stopping and going - that was an earthquake! Most of them come with the low hum before them.
We went to the supermarket as it was our usual shopping day, the shelves were half empty from things having smashed and you could see juice splashes still up the stands. Some stands were still in pieces. The bread aisle was completely empty.
So we made our own bread at home.
The roads could be fine and then there would be a big bump or a slump. There were still more aftershocks on Sunday night and I woke up just after midnight, why was I awake? Then I heard the low hum and my stomach sank. You just get sick of it, the constant uncertainty. The aftershock hit and it was a larger one but it passed. Lucy came into the room and climbed into our bed, her heart pounding. That was the night sometimes you slept through them and sometimes the shocks woke you up.
Monday there was no school but Karl had work. Walking around the house, I noticed cracks we hadn't seen before, maybe the aftershocks were still causing damage. They were not that major but should we call into the earthquake commission?
Today I feel really tired, three nights of less sleep, over the feelings of being on edge every time an aftershock comes (at least they seem to have dropped off quite a bit today). We walked down to get some milk at the dairy. Walking you noticed more of the damage, the cracks, the silt that had bubbled up from the ground, engineers checking the shops. Life is now sort of normal but we still boil water and it seems things aren't going to be completely normal for awhile,
