Has anyone experienced a natural disaster 1st hand?
Discussion
RobDickinson said:
Aye. I live in Christhcurch and lived through all the (1000's) quakes including all the big ones. Terrible time , you really cant put it into words.
September 2010 7.1 was in the early hours of the morning. The whole house shook for about a minute (this seems longer in the dark..) and felt at the time quite violent (little did we know). Luckily no damage at home and we even had power on, very few did.
Febuary 2011 6.3 I was in work over by the airport in a modern office building. All the ceiling stuff fell out, big aircon units, lights etc. I was crouched under my desk and was shaken so violently I pulled a muscle in my leg trying to stay put. We evacuated the building PDQ and I tried making contact with my wife who works in the CBD central hospital.
For the next 2 hours the ground never once stopped moving.
Not knowing what had happened, where, or how bad, and that work was officially done for a while I jumped in the car headed into the city to pick my wife up. Shortly after we got hit with a series of 5.9's, driving during one of those is like having 4 flats and a crazy person jerking the wheel all over.
The west side of the city isnt to bad. Messed up roads here and there, little bit of damage to bridges.
I get into Hagley park/Riccarton road roundabout and see a block of shops lying across the street - a hint of whats to come.
I get close to the hospital and manage to get in touch with my wife - she works in a windowless office without power or lights it was quite scary. They are evacuating patients into the park, I see hoards of patients with sheets wrapped round them wandering out. I see pickups used as ambulances with people in the back arriving at A&E.
My wife is a pharmacist trained in first aid etc , though doesnt work in pharmacy itself. Pharmacy all the shelves have collapsed stuff everywhere. A&E has no power people everywhere using headtorches. Absolute top respect to everyone working in the hospital that day. My wife elects to stay at work and help out where she can.
So I head home, which is about 15-18kms from the hospical out at Sumner. There is no power, no traffic lights. Roads are chaos gridlocked, I am on empty. I know back routes, most people arnt thinking that way so I get through to a back way home via the hills roads. Closer I get to home the more damage I see - I've not seen the absolute destruction of the CBD at this point.
Part way home I have to pass under a smashed railway bridge that is closed very soon after and takes 2 years to repair.. Luckily I picked this route as the main bridge is almost totalled and closed to all traffic. I sneak through some side roads over the hills to avoid that bit. (main brige reopens in april..)
Because the main bridge is closed but they are allowing people to run over it (not walk) I give a lift to a few people here along the causeway - which has many 1-2 ft wide cracks all along it. glad I have a 4wd.. Plenty of damage here, houses pancaked, walls down roads destroyed. The estuary has a 6ft mud cliff running down the center. I get close to home and there is a ragging waterfall down the hill ( all our clean water supply..) the road up to my home (quite narrow at the best of times) is only just navigable.
I get home about 3.5hrs after the main quake. We are still getting significant aftershocks , several a minute.
I have to force my way into home because every single thing in the entire house is lying smashed on the ground. everything that is breakable is broken. The house to my untrained eye looks ok - cracks in the concrete block but nothing too scary.
I find one of my cats locked solid in the conservatory hadnt moved since the quake catatonic with fright - I give her some cuddles and take her outside, we had 3 cats one we dont see for the next week.
I start trying to clear some stuff up - the entire kitchen is full of broken stuff, draws lept from one side of the room into the fridge on the other.
We have no power, no water, no sewage. We get power back after 5 weeks, water after 6, and sewage takes 6 months.
Pam leaves work with friends, their car is out of fuel so she walks home, I meet her at the ferrymead bridge in our car.
This looks and feels like a disaster movie. Twilight, the tail ends of cars sticking out of holes in the road,liquifaction eevrywhere, alarms going off all over. Crazy.
We spend a horrendous night at home woken by aftershocks every minute. The next day we spend queueing for water!! We have press flying over in helecopters and we now know what it feels like to be those people on the news... Finding food and trying to clean up at home, this takes a week. By then my work is up and running again, and we both spend the next 2 months showering at work, and camping at home.
Because we dont have power we miss most of the coverage about the CBD and the damage, loss of life etc.
The June 6.4 quake almost gets me. A smaller quake closes work so I head home. just as I am waiting in a turn right lane to turn up my hill the 6.4 hits. Thousands of tons of rock close the road meters behind the car. A landslip closes the road up about 30m ahead. My car (foot on the brakes hard) ends up in the left lane. Pam was at home and rides around the lounge on the sofa watching our glass sliding doors (2x3m) turn 90 degrees and embed into the frame. Everything breakable we have replace breaks again.
We have just had our house repaired, still waiting for the drive to be replaced.
This is just the surface overview of my day(s). Theres a lot more, a lot of good community stuff too. But overall I dont recomend the experience.
Thanks for sharing, that's pretty scary stuff ! September 2010 7.1 was in the early hours of the morning. The whole house shook for about a minute (this seems longer in the dark..) and felt at the time quite violent (little did we know). Luckily no damage at home and we even had power on, very few did.
Febuary 2011 6.3 I was in work over by the airport in a modern office building. All the ceiling stuff fell out, big aircon units, lights etc. I was crouched under my desk and was shaken so violently I pulled a muscle in my leg trying to stay put. We evacuated the building PDQ and I tried making contact with my wife who works in the CBD central hospital.
For the next 2 hours the ground never once stopped moving.
Not knowing what had happened, where, or how bad, and that work was officially done for a while I jumped in the car headed into the city to pick my wife up. Shortly after we got hit with a series of 5.9's, driving during one of those is like having 4 flats and a crazy person jerking the wheel all over.
The west side of the city isnt to bad. Messed up roads here and there, little bit of damage to bridges.
I get into Hagley park/Riccarton road roundabout and see a block of shops lying across the street - a hint of whats to come.
I get close to the hospital and manage to get in touch with my wife - she works in a windowless office without power or lights it was quite scary. They are evacuating patients into the park, I see hoards of patients with sheets wrapped round them wandering out. I see pickups used as ambulances with people in the back arriving at A&E.
My wife is a pharmacist trained in first aid etc , though doesnt work in pharmacy itself. Pharmacy all the shelves have collapsed stuff everywhere. A&E has no power people everywhere using headtorches. Absolute top respect to everyone working in the hospital that day. My wife elects to stay at work and help out where she can.
So I head home, which is about 15-18kms from the hospical out at Sumner. There is no power, no traffic lights. Roads are chaos gridlocked, I am on empty. I know back routes, most people arnt thinking that way so I get through to a back way home via the hills roads. Closer I get to home the more damage I see - I've not seen the absolute destruction of the CBD at this point.
Part way home I have to pass under a smashed railway bridge that is closed very soon after and takes 2 years to repair.. Luckily I picked this route as the main bridge is almost totalled and closed to all traffic. I sneak through some side roads over the hills to avoid that bit. (main brige reopens in april..)
Because the main bridge is closed but they are allowing people to run over it (not walk) I give a lift to a few people here along the causeway - which has many 1-2 ft wide cracks all along it. glad I have a 4wd.. Plenty of damage here, houses pancaked, walls down roads destroyed. The estuary has a 6ft mud cliff running down the center. I get close to home and there is a ragging waterfall down the hill ( all our clean water supply..) the road up to my home (quite narrow at the best of times) is only just navigable.
I get home about 3.5hrs after the main quake. We are still getting significant aftershocks , several a minute.
I have to force my way into home because every single thing in the entire house is lying smashed on the ground. everything that is breakable is broken. The house to my untrained eye looks ok - cracks in the concrete block but nothing too scary.
I find one of my cats locked solid in the conservatory hadnt moved since the quake catatonic with fright - I give her some cuddles and take her outside, we had 3 cats one we dont see for the next week.
I start trying to clear some stuff up - the entire kitchen is full of broken stuff, draws lept from one side of the room into the fridge on the other.
We have no power, no water, no sewage. We get power back after 5 weeks, water after 6, and sewage takes 6 months.
Pam leaves work with friends, their car is out of fuel so she walks home, I meet her at the ferrymead bridge in our car.
This looks and feels like a disaster movie. Twilight, the tail ends of cars sticking out of holes in the road,liquifaction eevrywhere, alarms going off all over. Crazy.
We spend a horrendous night at home woken by aftershocks every minute. The next day we spend queueing for water!! We have press flying over in helecopters and we now know what it feels like to be those people on the news... Finding food and trying to clean up at home, this takes a week. By then my work is up and running again, and we both spend the next 2 months showering at work, and camping at home.
Because we dont have power we miss most of the coverage about the CBD and the damage, loss of life etc.
The June 6.4 quake almost gets me. A smaller quake closes work so I head home. just as I am waiting in a turn right lane to turn up my hill the 6.4 hits. Thousands of tons of rock close the road meters behind the car. A landslip closes the road up about 30m ahead. My car (foot on the brakes hard) ends up in the left lane. Pam was at home and rides around the lounge on the sofa watching our glass sliding doors (2x3m) turn 90 degrees and embed into the frame. Everything breakable we have replace breaks again.
We have just had our house repaired, still waiting for the drive to be replaced.
This is just the surface overview of my day(s). Theres a lot more, a lot of good community stuff too. But overall I dont recomend the experience.
Edited by RobDickinson on Wednesday 17th September 04:02
If you get time to go into the other stuff as mentioned at the end please do.
It's also my understanding that we are due some big earthquakes, Tokyo for example ??
Gassing Station | The Lounge | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff