Eastern suburbs hit hard

BY CHARLIE GATES

Christchurch's eastern suburbs are among the hardest hit by Saturday's earthquake.

In Shirley the roads are warped, cracked and buckled, and many houses have suffered structural damage.

Around Queensbury St many homes still had no water, electricity or sewerage yesterday afternoon, although portable toilets had been delivered to nearby Reaby St.

All over the suburb people were shovelling ankle-deep silt from driveways and footpaths.

Small, volcano-shaped piles of sand marked where water had burst out of lawns.

Queensbury St resident Brian Hurst spent 18 hours shovelling sand from his driveway and garage.

"We thought the river had burst its banks because the water was just flowing down the road. The water just came up through the floor," he said.

His garage was buckled and cracked, while part of the house had dropped, jamming doors and windows.

In Ulm Place, the nine-metre power poles had sunk four metres.

Mark Elstone, of the Fire Service, said his crew completed more than 60 jobs in six hours.

"There is a lot of devastation and destruction.

"We are fully committed and we are going from call to call to call."

In New Brighton, flooded streets off Pages Rd were being pumped dry, and water was reconnected by noon.

People on a flatbed truck had been selling crates of water at $10 for 24 bottles throughout the morning.

Roads and houses were badly damaged, but houses had not been flooded.

In Waitaki St, Faye McKay was preparing to leave her cracked home.

The mains had broken where the footpath along her street had caved in, creating a metre-deep hole.

"I couldn't open the door after the quake. The house has dropped and jammed all the doors," she said.

"I was stuck in the house. I had to climb out of the window.

"I would say there is structural damage. I am devastated. My house is my pride and joy."

Ian Hodson, a City Care water-pipe layer, said it was a race against time to pump the water out of flooded streets and fix broken mains before high tide took the water over doorsteps and into homes.

"If the tide had come in, we would never have done it. It would have been overlapping the doorsteps," he said.

"They were very lucky. It would have flooded the houses."

Damage was widespread over a couple of blocks either side of the eastern end of Pages Rd.

A pumping station at the corner of Waitaki and Orari streets was pushed about 30 centimetres out of the ground, severing the main sewerage line to Bexley. Two City Care workers dug down to the pipe to clear it for engineers yesterday afternoon.

- © Fairfax NZ News