Earthquake Part 7

Now

Today was our first day back at school following the earthquake I have been writing about. Having not been teaching in the classroom for three weeks, going back felt strange. Our classrooms are safe to work in, and we can use the toilets, but along with the rest of the city we cannot drink tap water. We were asked to tell our students to wipe their feet on entering buildings, but at the end of the day my cleaner was still upset at the amount of silt that had been walked into the buildings. I took a bottle of water with me, and decided not to take the risk of drinking tea or coffee on site. As the temperature crept up (expected high of 27 degrees, after a foggy start to the day), I probably did not drink enough, which added to the mental block which a lot of use were struggling to overcome - we knew our brains weren't working right, and although we were attempting to be normal it was not convincing. Luckily there were no significant aftershocks. Doing my lunchtime duty, I noticed many scars in the grounds where I am guessing that pipes had needed repair. We also have lumps in the asphalt where the liquefaction has pushed up rather than through. The stream, named Pariwai by an ex-student, is no longer flowing and seems to have a layer of oil floating over some of it.

Then (22 February)

It took us 1 3/4 hours to get home - usually a 15 minute drive. As we got towards our end of Lyttelton Street, we could tell that things were worse than they had been in September - much more liquefaction. I dropped one of us at her home, and the other three at the school gates, two to collect their cars and one to walk home as she does every day. The picture above shows the hole in Lyttleton Street near to Pioneer Stadium, right in the middle of the road.

Arriving home, I found my husband safe at home, having taken 1 hour 55 minutes to get home from his school. He had been home for long enough to take photos of the damage but had left it for me to see. Not too bad, but worse than September - broken glassware, vases and platters, books and porcelain dolls on the floor, drawers in the kitchen open and so on. Perhaps the worst was the spilt port, which made a sickly sweet smell throughout the living areas and resulte din us bundling the rug up and putting it outside.

No power, no water, no toilet flushing. Our generator needed fixing - the starter cable had broken. The new gas hob has an electric ignition system but P. had asked the installer if it could be lit without power. My recollection is that he spent a long time fiddling with the barbecue starter to get the elements going, but he cooked a meal of sausages, potatoes and salad for the three of us. A bucket of water was filled from the rain water tank for judicious toilet "flushing" - there is a knack to pouring the water to replicate an actual cistern flush.

At some stage that evening the power came back on and we were able to watch the non-stop television coverage - or as much of it as we could bear. And we put our cell phones to charge!