Earthquake

Right well as I am sure you are all well aware of by now I am alive and alright as well as my family.  I have not updated people properly because I did not have power until late last night and I am generally physically and emotionally exhausted.  So instead, I will be provide you with the story of the last two days, best I can.  If you have further questions you may have to wait for me to feel more rested before I can cope.

Right well, I guess I may as well start at the begining.  I went to a mall with Martin and Tania (my cousins) and we were in the food court, the place was packed because it was lunch time, so we took a seat out of the way of the crowds.  I had only been sat down a couple of minutes and Martin was just about to sit down and the quake hit.  For the first few seconds no-body moved thinking that it was just another aftershock, but it certainly wasn't.  So I sat there confused, I swear that I thought that I was just on a plane and it was turbulance, but I realised quickly I was on the ground.  Tania quickly pulled me to the ground and we all hid under a very small table, stuff may well have come down from the roof but I did not notice.  We saw many people dash out of the mall, but we decided to wait until it wasn't quite so crowded.  Martin said we should take our food with us as well as our bags and such, so we did.

So although we did not know it at the time the earthquake hit 6.3 on the ricter scale, although that is not as big as the first one that was September of last year, which was a 7.1.  However this one was closer to the surface and closer to the city, so there was much more damage and many more fatalities, plus it was during the day, so people were not in their beds. 

Anyway we stood outside the building with many others.  We realised quite quickly that we would not be able to get back to the car since it was in the parking structure so we would have to walk back to the house and do our best to find their kids, since they were in school at the time.  When outside a fairly big aftershock hit and unfortunately Martin dropped his Pepsi... but we feared a local truck toppling, so we moved on.

As we moved into the town, so that we could get across it to the otherside we started to see the true devestation that the quake had wreaked.  The roads were fucked, silt and water and mud was spewing up out of the road throughout the city and many buildings had either come down totally or were on their way down.  We have plenty of photos that I can share with you later, on but for now I'm sure you can find such things on the news and the web.  As we walked we felt some of the bigger aftershocks and just hung to anyone close to hand.  The roads were filled with cars and people all trying to get out.

The walk back to Martin and Tania's house was about 10km, Martin ran ahead to see what he could do and grab the second car and see if he could grab the kids, so I stayed back with Tania, who unfortunately had crappy shoes, not fit for walking in.  But we walked regardless.  For the most part we had no problems with the walk, but it was fucking scary and there were many buildings to avoid as they stood unstable.

We got all the way back to withing just a few blocks from the house and we came across roads that were totally flooded, we had to walk through water up to knee high.  Then we finally made it back to the house and came across the chaos within.  It was not as bad as it could have been by far, there was stuff on the floor, smashed and what not and furniture had crashed down, but we got it cleared up in a couple of hours.  We consolidated our resources and moved all the bedding to the living room and stayed together.  Luckily Martin had stored 40 litres of water in his garrage.  The power was out as well so we settled in for the night together. 

The aftershocks continued throughout the night and so I got very little sleep.  At about 3am we heard a man shouting outside.  Then we realised that the power was back on. I was able to let some people know I was okay at this point.  Shortly after we all settled in for sleep again.  I did get to sleep eventually, but whenever one of the bigger aftershocks hit I would wake up as would Martin, Tania did not sleep throughout the night.