A rude awakening

MICHELLE NORTON

AN 82-YEAR-OLD partially blind Rodney woman experienced her first earthquake in Christchurch's shakeup last weekend.

Edna Grummit of Orewa, daughter Janis and her husband and his brother were on the Millennium Hotel's fifth floor when the 7.1 magnitude quake hit at about 4.30am.

The group had travelled to Christchurch for what was meant to be a relaxing weekend.

Edna says she woke early Saturday morning with a peculiar feeling.

"Suddenly the bed was moving side to side and I thought `something is wrong here'."

None of the windows had broken but they had all opened.

Edna then woke Janis who had slept through the commotion.

"I wonder if I hadn't been there whether she would have woken up," Edna says.

The earthquake was still going when Janis yelled for her mother to get on the floor.

Edna says she just followed instructions and did not give a thought to her recent knee replacement, until she was on the ground and felt a sharp pain in her knees.

Mother and daughter stayed low in their room and delayed descending the 300 stairs to the hotel lobby.

"It was bitterly cold and I had to find clothes in the pitch black," Edna says.

There was an eerie feeling in the hotel, she says.

"I could hear the bells chiming with the movement from the cathedral across the road."

When they got downstairs, the lobby was filled with people. The hotel had taken guests from two nearby hotels because they were running on a generator. Edna says she was able to stay calm despite the chaos.

"I didn't feel panicky but I guess everybody reacts differently in a disaster. It's only really dawning on me now."

Edna has never been in an earthquake before and she is very impressed with how the Christchurch disaster is being handled.

– Michelle Norton is an AUT journalism student

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