It's a life changer

BY MARTIN VAN BEYNEN

OPINION: All who experienced the Canterbury earthquake and its aftermath will have their own story and I expect ours is fairly similar to a large number of families'.

Similar in all but one respect. I wonder how many people can boast they were hit by a dinosaur during the quake. My son, Jack, can. A stegosaurus in fact.

In years to come, when the more mundane and brutal details are forgotten, Jack and his siblings, I suspect, will still remember the detail of the stegosaurus.

Fortunately it was not the solid plastic brachiosaurus he has had since he was a small boy that hit him. It was a wooden model which has quietly occupied a window sill above the stairwell in our house for several years. When the quake hit, the stegosaurus departed the shelf to land on my son's head as he was belting down the stairs in the dark. He thought he had been hit by glass, which is a bit dramatic given the model is so light it would float away in a stiff breeze.

This was followed later in the morning by me being hit on the head as I opened a cupboard, by one of those old milk crates we used to put out for the milkmen.

You can tell we are some of the very lucky Cantabrians not too badly affected by the quake, even though Diamond Harbour on Banks Peninsula, where we live, was the epicentre of the Wednesday aftershock, which exacerbated the damage done on Saturday.

I am amazed we got off so lightly. The sheer jangling noise of the house being shaken on Saturday morning suggested a number of scenarios.

I could see the house collapsing and at the very least all the windows breaking.

But when the tremor subsided we emerged, as far as I can tell at this stage, virtually unscathed. Some books were piled on the floor and a few other bits and pieces had fallen but the house was OK. I have often cursed the old wooden monolith as a maintenance nightmare but I never felt fonder of it than after the quake. I wasn't so worried about the tidy-up. I didn't think our children's bedrooms, post quake, would look much different.

The quake was a good test for our non-existent emergency plan. I couldn't find my son. During the night he had decided to sleep in another bed. My daughter had decided the quake would go away if she stayed under the blankets so she had to be escorted down the stairs to relative safety.

We all sheltered in various doorways, which is not the drop, cover and hold routine I have since heard about. At least I found a torch relatively quickly and after checking on the neighbours I lit a cheery fire. Another stroke of luck was that I had removed our brick chimney last year.

So, no water, no power, dubious sanitary arrangements and jittery kids. But I had priorities. I figured I needed to go to work on what was probably one of the biggest stories in Christchurch - ever. As a journalist you lament the effects of a disaster but a part of you revels in the event because of its news potential. It's interesting that in the week preceding the quake I was called a vulture and weasel, but in the days after the quake, when I spoke to perhaps 50 people in varying degrees of distress, none told me to go away or refused to talk.

My wife wasn't too impressed with me deserting the family so soon after a calamity and was disappointed the lawns were not going to be mowed.

But I didn't need to go far to find a story. Most of the chimneys in my street were down or teetering but it wasn't until I called into Godley House, a grand stone hotel building at the end of the street, that I understood how severe the quake had been.

The lessees, Michelle and Richard Hawes, whom we have known for many years, were shattered but the building was in much worse condition and would deteriorate during the week with the aftershocks. A big chunk of a brick wall above the door of their bedroom had nearly fallen on them but they were good sports and showed me around the damage that would earn the building a "no go" sticker.

"It's a life changer," Richard, still looking shocked, said.

Already, friends were on the scene to make sure they had somewhere to shower and sleep for the night.

That set the pattern for the day which was full of stories of cruel damage, incredible escapes, rescue people on the job, fixers appearing out of nowhere and community care and spirit. It was the same on Monday when I spent the day in the eastern suburbs seeing the cracked and buckled houses and split-open sections.

I thought pictures would be able to convey the scale and rawness of the damage better than words, but even they seem to struggle.

The community spirit evident so far is certainly going to be tested over the next couple of weeks, maybe years, as some of the hard and tedious facets of this disaster sink in.

I notice my wife has put the stegosaurus back in its place on the window sill. If only putting Christchurch and Canterbury back together again was as easy.

- © Fairfax NZ News