The day of reckoning

At 4.35am last Saturday, Canterbury and its people were changed forever. MARTIN VAN BEYNEN looks back at one of the region's most momentous weeks - and the miracle of survival that accompanied it.

More than most disasters, an earthquake finds a city out.

A severe shake tests infrastructure, examines emergency responses, exposes planning decisions and, most of all, it asks some searching questions of its people.

Canterbury, in its first week after the major tremor, which struck at 4.35am on September 4, has passed many of these tests with flying colours. It should give itself a collective pat on the back - but not too hard.

A week after one of the biggest jolts to strike a modern, populated city anywhere in the world, Canterbury authorities have managed to restore most of the services usually taken for granted.

By tomorrow, just about everybody still living in their own home in Canterbury should have water and power. Given the extent of the original breakages and outages, that is some achievement. In fact, most homes had water and power by Monday night and by Tuesday, 90 per cent of the city's residents were able to flush their toilets. By yesterday, only 11 streets were without water.

The airport inspected its runways immediately and within hours, aircraft were taking off again. The Port of Lyttelton was working again on Sunday afternoon despite up to $50 million damage to wharves and storage areas.

As expected, Canterbury people pitched in and did what they could for themselves and their neighbours and friends. The welfare centres set up on Saturday were still busy mid- week with about 280 people in occupation. But out of the city of 360,000 or so, that is not a large number.

People like bungy king A J Hackett went ahead with their weddings in the ruined city. Mike Bird didn't have much choice. He had already tattooed September 4 on his arm.

By Wednesday, the chooks had started laying again and by Thursday, several schools had reopened. Not all the memories were bad. A few hours after the quake, writer Joe Bennett found his fellow citizens of Lyttelton in good spirits. "Everyone was talking in the sunshine. There was a lot of laughter. It didn't seem to be the nervous laughter of survivors. It was cheerful, convivial. It felt like a holiday," he wrote.

In the aftermath, Wayne Alexander, of Christchurch, said: "You're never more in love with life and that's what I like about it. Whenever you face loss, you realise on the other side of it what you've got."

But first there was terror. For many, the noise was deafening as windows rattled fit to break, glass and crockery crashed to the floor and chimneys and tiles toppled. For many in the beach suburbs, the first panicked thought was for a possible tsunami. Those who had access to their vehicles caused a traffic jam as they headed away from the coast. Without power, many could not open their automatic garage doors.

Annette Preen, living on her own in her new house in Bexley, felt trapped as she tried to kick down her security door. "I thought I was going to die." When she made it outside, she fell headfirst into the wet sand piled at her front door.

"I fell flat on my face and the silt being so heavy, I couldn't get out."

For Chris Piper, 18, of St Martins, it was the scariest moment of his life. He was sleeping in a sleepout behind his family's home and was woken painfully when a television fell on his feet.

"I threw my girlfriend on the lawn and then went to the house in bare feet and my underwear to see tiles and the chimney crashing down. I thought the whole house was going to collapse. I thought my whole family was going to die in front of me."

Imagine the plight of paraplegic Renee Hayman, lying in her room at the Kate Sheppard Hospital in Avonside. "I felt quite helpless, really."

At dawn, Christchurch turned on a pearler of a day. Residents could survey the damage in the light of warm bright sunshine. Another godsend, perhaps.

Supermarkets were some of the first businesses to re-open. By 10.40am, St Martins New World had cleaned up aisles smelling of vinegar and alcohol and had tills running on generator power. By midday, power was on again and business was as busy as a Christmas Eve, owner Russell McKenzie said.

Other supermarkets around town dealt with panic buying and were soon out of bottled water, milk, bread, batteries and candles. As it became clear starvation was going to be averted, the panic subsided. Frantic buying at the city's service stations also abated as it became clear fuel supplies were not threatened.

Every city has its low-lifes and a few took advantage of deserted houses and businesses to help themselves. Some were caught, including two burglars masquerading as tradesmen. Looting did not occur and overall crime was actually down, police said. However, domestic violence spiked as strained nerves and arguments escalated into punches and kicks.

The rally happened quickly. By midweek the army of volunteers, recruited partly from students at Canterbury's two universities and from the Christchurch Polytechnic, had swelled to more than 1000. Many others had already done their bit. As Janet Derham prepared to evacuate her ravaged Bexley home on Monday, a woman from Avonhead and a student arrived from nowhere to help her pack. Age Concern had many offers from people offering to help old people clean up. Farmers near Darfield with working milking sheds helped neighbours whose sheds were not operating.

Mostly, the speedy restoration of services was due to the unstinting efforts of well organised crews of fixers - the linesmen, the cable jointers, the excavator drivers, the drainlayers, the plumbers, roofers and builders. They were people like Ed Askew, a cable jointer for Orion, the operator of the Christchurch power network, who worked continuous 14-hour days despite his own two-storey home being devastated. Orion engineer Steve MacDonald was at work at midday on Saturday despite the destruction of his home at Brooklands.

As a radio announcer put it: "Good people doing the right things."

Christchurch City Council water and waste water manager Mark Christison said his workers repaired as many defects in six days as they would in a whole year.

A team of about 100 structural engineers from around the country assessed central city buildings for damage to allow people to return to offices and factories. On Thursday they turned their attention to houses. Police and army staff did the tedious work of staffing cordons and providing security. Volunteer firefighters tackled the thousands of teetering chimneys left in the wake of the earthquake.

As if there wasn't enough destruction and heartache caused by Saturday's jolt, on Wednesday it all started again. At 7.49am, the region was rocked again by a shallow quake, as sharp if not as long as the weekend's shake. It was the crescendo of the 350 aftershocks following the first tremor.

For some, it was one jolt too far. Cars streamed out of the city going both south and north. Mayor Bob Parker said the latest jolt had sent his "guts churning".

"It is like living in a maelstrom. This is a hammer blow to the spirit of a lot of people."

Hornby mother Nicola Sanderson sent her sleepless seven-year- old Tony to stay with his grandmother in Dunedin. Health communications specialist Kim Thomas took her 10-month-old baby to family in Napier. Beds at Christchurch Hospital were pushed together so patients could hold hands.

For some, it was a tipping point. Steve Wragg, of Christchurch, was staying home. "You don't like to admit you are terrified," he said. Employers reported everyone being more jittery after the latest shake. Some workers refused to come to work.

The Wednesday jolt, which centred in Lyttelton, worsened existing damage and caused more of its own. Power was cut temporarily and the Lyttelton Tunnel, which showed no damage after Saturday's quake was closed for a couple of hours after cracks appeared in its yellowish tiles. Press staff had to move out of their building in Cathedral Square for the first time. Buildings already assessed twice since the Saturday shake because of aftershocks had to be reviewed again. The state of emergency in Christchurch and Waimakariri was extended for seven days.

Although the aftershocks kept coming, it was important to look around occasionally for a reminder that Christchurch was not levelled and most of it looked absurdly normal. A stranger driving into Christchurch on Monday might well have wondered what all the fuss was about. The visitor would have seen the rubbish collectors emptying the city's red refuse bins, heavy traffic on intact roads and cyclists and joggers out enjoying a sunny day.

Damage was not instantly visible. The sharp-eyed would have seen tarpaulins covering holes where chimneys had formerly protruded, but would have been hard-pressed to see much more.

However, those inclined to scoff at media reports about the severity of the quake were in for a rude shock in the central city where a different picture emerged.

Police officers and army staff were manning cordons and checkpoints. The streets were crawling with men in white hard hats and orange vests carrying clipboards. Demolition crews were already working. Orange cones, temporary fences, emergency tape and orange netting screened hard hit buildings, many sporting jagged cracks and missing bits. A walk around town, those parts that were accessible, would have revealed cracked towers, ruptured walls and piles of rubble.

The Christchurch earthquake will be remembered for the massive damage it caused rather than the people it killed. The absence of loss of life is its distinguishing characteristic. In the Haiti earthquake in January, which clocked much the same mark on the Richter scale, 250,000 were killed. The Kobe earthquake (7.1) in Japan in 1995 claimed 6400 lives. The Napier earthquake in February 1931 killed 256 people and even the Murchison quake of 1929 had 17 fatalities. But in Canterbury it was 0.

Some of the zero total can be put down to pure luck. Mayor Bob Parker described it as "the most extraordinary miraculous event".

The timing of the first 30-second jolt on Saturday was incredibly fortunate. The Napier earthquake hit about 10.30am on a busy shopping day.

In Christchurch the streets were empty of traffic and people. Nobody was shopping and few cars were parked under the many brick facades in the city. Nobody, for instance, was on the footpath outside the apartments of the former Old Normal School building in Montreal Street when a massive chimney came tumbling onto the asphalt.

Amazing response

Nobody was sleeping in the guest bed at the historic Godley House, in Diamond Harbour, when the fireplace fell onto the bed. Nobody was on Bridle Path Road near Lyttelton when a car-sized boulder plummeted from its perch further up the hill. Renowned architect Sir Miles Warren was not sitting in his usual chair at his historic homestead Ohinetahi when stone blocks landed on it.

More importantly, nobody was working in the Hornby coolstores and supermarket distribution centres where nine-metre-high racking loaded with heavy goods like alcohol collapsed. The resulting mess in some warehouses was three storeys high but at least nobody was buried underneath.

Debris from the warehouses was soon clogging the city's transfer stations. One operation lost $90 million worth of alcohol. Another large New Zealand wide coolstore business lost $40m worth of frozen goods including most of the country's stock of frozen turkeys.

Former Christchurch man John Mander, a structural engineering professor teaching at Texas A and M University, says "of any place in the world this would probably be the best prepared".

He refers to the more stringent building standards imposed in New Zealand after the Napier earthquake and to the general awareness gained from living in an earthquake-prone country.

There is no doubt Canterbury responded extremely well. A well educated and resourceful population containing an army of skill and brawn, backed by a trained and honest central and local government, civil service, police force and other emergency services made all the difference. Canterbury is not Haiti, which showed poverty kills.

Modern technology also helped. Earthquake-proof cellphone towers meant people could check on each other and call for help. Valerie Walsh, for instance, was stuck in her twisted Bexley house which was slowly filling in the dark with silty water. She texted a friend who sounded the alert. Websites, including The Press's online service, were able to provide vital information about water and sewage, especially when power was re-established. Radio stations did a marvellous job of keeping people informed.

The fact the quake devastated localised parts of the city meant friends and family were able to help those less fortunate. The lack of serious injuries and people trapped in buildings eased what could have been an enormous load on the emergency services.

Hospitals and medical centres were able to cope as they dealt with about 100 cases of earthquake related injuries. Had it been worse, the emergency services could have called on the 525 general practitioners in Christchurch for their annual conference.

In addition, fires did not break out. In Napier, even sound buildings were destroyed by a huge blaze which spread quickly in the wind and heat because firefighters were unable to use their hoses due to a water pressure collapse. Christchurch firefighters had to put out only one fire, a blaze in JoJos massage parlour, which broke out when Prime Minister John Key was inspecting the damage in Worcester Street with Mayor Bob Parker.

Strangely, Christchurch is not particularly earthquake prone.

Look at a New Zealand map denoting the big shakes between 1870 and 1980 with red dots and Christchurch is blank. The Big One was supposed to come from the Alpine Fault which is due for a pressure release. Instead, Saturday's quake came from a fault hidden under the Canterbury gravels near Darfield, about 30km south-west of Christchurch. The fault hadn't moved much for 16,000 years. When it shed its load, its tentacles reached out in arbitrary directions, sparing some areas but ruining others.

The area closest to the epicentre, fortunately most of it rural, showed how violently the earth moved. A double row of young trees in the middle of the 25km fault trace, from Greendale to Aylesbury, moved 4.5 metres. As the quake fanned out it buckled railway tracks near Sandy Knolls Rd corner and shifted the centre lines of Telegraph Rd to the side of the road. The area experienced the strongest ground shaking ever recorded in New Zealand.

On farms, tracks, water races, fences and shelter belts were displaced. About 45 grain silos tipped over and rotary dairy sheds jumped their rails. At a poultry farm in Weedons 3000 egg-laying chooks were killed when two or three stands containing their 26,000 chickens collapsed. In Greendale 300 tonnes of sorted potatoes in a storage shed were turned into a jumbled mess on the shed floor.

One fork of the quake headed on a line towards Christchurch city and its suburbs, seemingly jumping the ring of hills around Lyttelton Harbour and the Waimakariri River to strike Kaiapoi, 20km north of Christchurch, which displayed some of the most graphic damage after the quake. About five kilometres of railway line in the area was buckled. The city suburbs of Avonside, Bexley, Burwood, New Brighton, Dallington, suburbs built predominantly on ocean and river sand were ravaged. Liquefaction, a phenomenon which turns the ground's underlying layers into jelly, dealt to them.

With a force only nature can produce, silt/sand laden water was forced through the ground under houses. Steel reinforced concrete pads under new houses cracked and they shifted under the strain. Older houses on piles moved off foundations. Roads in the worst affected areas buckled and crumpled and some power-poles dropped several metres. Small but productive sand volcanoes appeared all over the area spreading a thick layer of wet sand and silt onto gardens, streets and footpaths. The Avon River bed rose as if an underground snake had burrowed its way along its course. Pipes of every description broke and water mixed with sewage in the streets. A bridge in Kaiapoi collapsed and a walking bridge in Avonside twisted to resemble a corkscrew.

A city is only as good as its infrastructure. Christchurch's proved remarkably resilient, thanks partly to a lot of precautionary work. As dawn broke on Saturday all of rural Canterbury was out of power as was 90 per cent of the city.

- © Fairfax NZ News