[CEUS-earthquake-hazards] Christchurch, New Zealand, Update

[Phyllis Steckel]

Greetings, all.

Below is an update from the gentleman, “M,” who lives in the Christchurch, New Zealand, area.  The message has been slightly edited due to space limitations.  His personal report was sent several months ago through this Central US List-Server.  

Winter has set in now, and the melancholy feel of M’s report is very clear....

Earthquake Insight LLC
Phyllis J. Steckel, RG
PO Box 2002
Washington, MO 63090
636-239-4013
psteckel at charter.net 

"Minimizing earthquake risk is a funny business. The payoff may not come for a long time -- and then it will be in terms of what did not happen."

Dear Mac,



More than 7,350 aftershocks so far, many of them – particularly the recent one on 13 June – quite destructive. My family is still ok, thank God, but the community feels besieged. Certainly migration to Australia has increased. The scientists say our zone is going to be seismically active for up to a year so it is not a bad idea to put your trip off. I do look forward to seeing you when can finally come.



***



The human cost is very heavy:  disturbing images will horrify the children for a long time, something grand in the aspect of a city that was familiar and comfortable is gone, homes gone, work disappearing, businesses and institutions crumbling before our eyes, and the very earth not to be trusted. I am thinking of a friend: a good, kindly, talented, light-hearted, friend buried in the rubble of one of our fine old churches. This is essentially a small town and I know that my sad feeling is going click, click, click through a line of thousands of hearts tipping like dominoes. 



What happened when the quakes struck?



Balance was gone. Even the idea of balance was gone. The sound was awful. The world moved, but for a snapshot in time, the mind and heart stopped absolutely. We ended up tossed wherever, and then struggled out of it. The wreckage was stupefying. It was mildly surprising to be alive.  



Several Subud families send children to the local school in Heathcote Valley. The school is just along the road from our hall. On 22nd, February as the mothers felt the strength of the quake and ran towards the school, they could hear a terrified, mass scream from the children. They were safe, thank God. This was an extraordinary event.  



Quoting from the 29 March Press, “Heathcote residents experienced the world’s strongest recorded up-and-down shaking during last month’s earthquake. Equipment in a Heathcote Valley School building measured peak ground accelerations of more than 2.2 times that of gravity only three seconds into the magnitude 6.3 quake....”



Over time, months not days, the tally of destruction is growing. In a city this size it seems that everyone knows someone who has died. It could be a really close friend or merely a friendly face from town, but their absence creates its’ own weight on our hearts. And the other heart, the heart of our beautiful city, is gone. We can only realise this piece by piece. Nobody can take it in all at once. We get confused driving on familiar streets because they are unrecognisable. There are facades and interiors of cherished buildings we will never see again, and only disorienting gaps in the air where they used to be. Historic Oaks in the park are gone, and our companionable Redwood tree next to the Subud Hall has been taken down. Trees were forced upward and their roots torn leaving them tipped and dangerous. 900 buildings in the central business district and more than 10,000 homes will be demolished. Extensive suburban areas have sunk 400 to 600 mm, and the land may never be usable again. The Port Hills between Lyttleton and Heathcote rose almost half a metre. With homes lost, jobs gone, schools gone, businesses disappeared along with the wreckage of markets, libraries, restaurants, theatres, roads and bridges, 70,000 people initially left. No one knows how many will return. The collapse of huge bits of the physical order continually reverberates in the social order.



How is it for us now eight months out from the September Quake?



Since September we have had almost 7,000 aftershocks. Some have been huge, but even the small ones are a steady hammering on our nerves and our structures.  When the ground shakes it might be time to try to get out, or curl up in a ball near something big and sturdy. The brain kicks in and says, ‘Hey, don’t panic, it’s only a small one.’ The body, however, drops into fight or flight mode with all the typical physiological and neurological response. At night, it is a nasty way to wake up. The stress shows in the statistics. Heart attacks are way up from the average, as are: domestic violence figures, increased tranquillizer use; drug abuse, cigarette, and booze consumption, are all increasing alarmingly. The mentally ill are very vulnerable as are the elderly and disabled. 



We do not like to complain because so many other people in the world are so much worse off. We are very conscious that if one has to get through a disaster, New Zealand is a great place to do it. But to be blunt, it’s hard. Four families have already left our group for more settled environments. The unpredictable but constantly expected aftershocks are hard to live with. The sight of such enormous destruction is depressing. The pervasive uncertainty about jobs, schools, mortgages, reconstruction and insurance is debilitating.  



How much can a house take? Pick it up and shake it, and then over 8 months, thump it with a big fist 7,000 times. Places that are now habitable are slowly becoming uninhabitable.



***





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