Heartfelt Account

What follows is a heartfelt personal account of the disaster in Christchurch, forwarded to us by a member.

Dear Everyone,

Christchurch is broken.

We are all bequeathed with a new and precious awareness of life.

I'm at Colin and Betty's home, power finally restored last night. We were all too shattered and tired to do anything next, except sleep.

80% of the city is without water, 60% without power. We still have no water other than bottled, food is scarce, communication uncertain, streets, homes and buildings broken, people dead forever.

We have each other, the spirit of love and cooperation, and a flowering newness of who and what are important, blooming in contrast like these lovely summer gardens to this fractured city.

I want to deeply thank all of you who sent messages of concern - I opened my e-mail this morning for the first time in three days to find 43 messages, and the very first one I chose to read made me feel wonderful. This has been an emotional time, on the edges of many things.

Then Hillary's sweet message next, made me laugh and realize I should describe a couple of things here. She said she heard from Barbara, who rang me 4 hours after, and that I was OK and had 'felt the effects'. Okay is a word that should carry streamers of qualifiers, and 'felt it' - well, that would be about the mildest term of understatement that could possibly be made. So I'll give it a go, describing a few highs, lows and horizontals of this profound event. Pardon the loquacious length.

Just a sidenote to say, we don't blame Nature - whether earthquakes, floods, cyclones, avalanches, volcanic eruptions or other forces - capricious rolls of the dice of life, just letting us know that Nature is where all elemental power resides.

I had a huge technical writing report due on my findings for the Nautilus project, early Monday morning. In typical procrastination, I'd been playing and having fun in my bookshop, putting off the report until I had to stay up all night - finally sending it 7am. Slept a little in the afternoon, then went to dinner with a glass of wine. For some reason, I had trouble sleeping the night, awakening to think of a friend or loved one, a package that hasn't been delivered, my bookshop I was sleeping in, being homeless, work ahead, and a trail of dreams unfolding toward mountain pilgrimage, and would I be worthy or not of seeing those summits.

So I was quite tired when I got up on a foggy Tuesday morning, 22nd of February, went to the Windsor for brekky and a shower, never imagining it would be the last day of this wonderful, friendly, bed and brekky hotel. One meets many Antarcticans going or coming from the Ice at the Windsor, sharing brekky table and conversation - mostly covering science topics. I sat with Antarctic veterans Jim from Kansas and Dave from New Mexico, asking if they would like to help me moving some books for a few hours this morning. Jim said sure, Dave had a car to pick up, so Jim and I drove over to Ferrymead.

My assistant Diedre met us there, and we worked for three and a half hours - my bookshop looking so good, nearing completion, maybe two months away, and the closest I'd ever been to fulfilling this lifetime dream. We'd worked very hard, so called it a day, paid Diedre and asked Jim if I could buy him lunch. We shot over to Sumner, on the beach ten minutes drive away along the estuary and Pacific Blue Ocean, sun out on a warm partly cloudy summer day.

It was an Indian restaurant, ten minutes to one, talking and waiting hungrily for rice and dal after a big workout. And it wasn't one of those slow, rolling, long rumbling ones - not at all. Sudden, sharp, short, loud and violent... BANG! an extremely violent BOOM, and as I stood up to dive under the table, SLAMMED to the floor as if slipping on glassy ice, banging an inside right knee HARD on the tile, SLAMMED again an instant later scrambling under the table, hitting the same knee as the building seemed to bounce. Jim lay sprawled, also knocked off his feet, not quite making it under the next table. Rock snapped, over five or ten seconds, whatever, and our world changed in that instant, for the rest of our lives.

Sumner is just over the hill from Lyttleton Harbour, the epicenter, so yes, we felt it a bit. Ceiling stuff was falling, glass everywhere, bar had collapsed with smashed bottles - but out the windows the REAL shock had appeared. We were straight out the door in a flash and into a street to behold one dramatic scene; choking red dust filling the air and the whole sky - god, entire hillsides and cliffs above and across the street had collapsed, landslides telling us, son, this is major. As red dust cleared a bit, we looked in horror to see a boulder the size of a huge two-story house had come down too, crushing several cars and had smashed most of the back half of the RSA (Returned Servicemen Association) building. We learned later that one man died there having lunch, another serviceman never to return. Two women were crying and hugging each other - we asked if they were okay, and they were going on about just getting out of the RSA kitchen, a look of terror in their eyes, the wail of sirens just starting up, joining the wails of people.

My trusty green station wagon had escaped falling things by itself, so we started driving back towards town and the bookshop. We never made it. We could see black smoke from fires on the city skyline. More things increased our awareness of the magnitude of this event. Streets were cracked, ripped, buckled and hazardous, with car-sized subsidence holes appearing all over. Most incredibly, risen out in the estuary water like a sloping sea monster, was this great section of sand that had been uplifted from the estuary floor - and now a huge rip of roaring whitewater was pouring down a narrowed channel between it and the yacht club!

Then through the crawling traffic and urgent radio chatter on Radio New Zealand we reached the Ferrymead Bridge - it was cracked and badly damaged, partially collapsed, impassible. We could not reach the bookshop. We diverted up into the hills, shocked at the widespread damage of houses, chimneys, roofs, whole buildings, and on every single street we were weaving through dunes of sandy silt from liquefaction, or around cracked, split open fissures and sinkholes. We slowly followed a string of cars through neighbourhoods milling with dazed people out of their houses, many walking, riding bicycles. Almost surreal was Heathcote River, its normally clear stream already a dirty gray from sediment - risen above its banks, flooding streets. Something had gone very, very wrong with the river.

Normally a ten minute drive, we got to Colin and Betty's large lovely home an hour later, and it was again a centre for neighbours, family and friends. Everyone was of course upset and on edge as aftershocks continued to rumble through the overcast Christchurch hills. News had come through on the radio, there were fatalities, nine tall buildings had collapsed, two buses were crushed by buildings, and the Christchurch Cathedral had collapsed into Cathedral Square. Surely many had died. It was not good.

Colin's home took a hit, the fireplace actually fell into the living room, the tall chimney detached from the house leaning, with the roof chimney precarious. Thousands of books had fallen out of the shelves, all over the floors in two big rooms. They decided to leave, and stay at their daughter Denali's and her husband's house with their two grand-daughters. Betty and Denali would take the kids down south to Geraldine, and a friend's deer farm, next morning, relieving that stress on everyone.

So Jim and I left, and headed towards the Windsor. I parked as close as I could get to Hagley Park, way over by the cricket fields. We walked past a makeshift chopper landing zone right on the cricket pitch. Just when I needed to walk, I was slowed by the swollen knee, plus a week earlier had strained a left hamstring while jogging in this same park. So I was hobbling a bit sore, carrying my duffel bag, when we got to the Windsor half an hour later.

Poor Windsor, hit hard and taped off, brick walls had fallen away to the west side and the entire old wood and brick building was wounded so badly no one could get in - Jim had left his passport in his room. Don told us go to the Y, so we walked towards the Art Centre. Scenes downtown were frightening, out of a movie. A tall telescoping crane was lifting people from a balcony on a high-rise, smoke billowing behind; down Glouster St, there was the Cathedral, spire bell-tower gone, and there by the bridge lay Robert Falcon Scott, his marble statue down near the swollen Avon. This, the 100 year-anniversary since his fateful race to the South Pole against Amundsen, and as you know, he came second to the pole and he and all his team lost their lives on return. Now, his white head lay buried in the green turf on the banks of the Avon, exactly 100 years later. Two Christchurch icons, Cathedral Tower and Scott, fallen down. Baby, me too.

We reached the YMCA, and they had rooms in this new modern 'earthquake-proof' six-story concrete building. We checked in and they said they had a soup kitchen set up across the street by the Botanical Gardens big fountain. In line, I asked a young attractive woman from Switzerland about the bandage on her head, the dried blood on her jacket. She'd been in the Cathedral and was hit by falling rock, needing a few stiches. After a meager feed, we went back to the Y - in half an hour they had decided to evacuate, and we were told to get our luggage and get out, NOW. We walked to the refugee camp in Hagley Park, on the other side of the river, choppers and smoke and sirens in the air.

We were kept in a holding area, the skies kind of fittingly becoming threatening, then a few raindrops falling with the temperature. Red Cross and volunteers were hauling plywood into a huge marquis tent that had been set up for the Ellerslee International Flower Show. They had to put boards down because liquefaction had spread wet silt and sand all over the ground. Then it started raining. A slow, steady dispiriting wet, yet somehow an appropriate end to a long, harrowing, dark day.

Finally herded in to the grand marquis, about 1,500 of us waited in lines for a couple of hours to register with the Red Cross before they gave us a registration form to get in to the sleeping area and be issued blankets and pillows. Huge tent, buzzing with conversation, as you can imagine, but a well-lighted and dry place to lie down on the floor, cover up and sleep half an hour.

Smell of food brought me up and a good feed of rice and soup and pasta with tomato sauce was great, plenty of water too. Already fairly exhausted, I lay down again, finding sleep fitful with the aftershocks and people accidently stepping on my feet walking by, place lit up and chattering away all night long. New Mexico Dave from brekky was there, and he'd had one hell of a day. At lunch across from the Cathedral, he saw the church lift up, the tower collapse upon itself and topple. He saw four elderly women coming out of the gift shop, the last three crushed to death by falling steeple. He went into triage in the square, a trained medic and Vietnam Veteran, Dave said he splinted more than twenty broken arms and legs. He looked shattered, his clothes bad, and went straight to sleep.

Hot coffee early in the morning, and I was off still very tired and sore-legged, to go find my car. Sun was only just risen, again a mournful overcast day, eerie with no cars, and silent when I passed Cashel Mall - not an American mall, just a street of shops really, pedestrians only. One solitary young man stood there by the barrier tape, his face as crushed and devasted as an earthquaked city. I asked if he was all right - he looked at me and just said, "My sister died over there in that rubble, I'm here to identify her body". A policeman walked up and took him down Cashel and I wandered off, sad and pensive.

Next thing was something that will stick with me. Passing on the side of Christchurch Central Hospital, there was this little boy, maybe five, wailing "daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy" over and over and over again, held by his mother, two other adults trying without hope to give comfort. This plaintive cry echoed down the street a long way, over and over and over, echoing now in the halls of memory, forever.

Reaching my car surprisingly sore-legged, I tried to drive to the bookshop. It was tough, and took a while; liquefaction had torn and fissured Ferry road, and big subsiding holes and slots like crevasses were an obstacle course. In front of my shop, an abandoned car and mini-bus were sunk in a big street hole, the silver sedan half nosed in at a 45 degree angle, the bus leaning towards it. And, my shop front had changed.

Building now had cracks all along, and uh-oh, sandy silt lay right to the front door. It took a while to open it, pushing against the hard silt. Inside was bad, very bad, in fact, devastating chaos. What was before a blossoming new bookshop, was a place with smashed bookcases leaning crazily, hills of books strewn in jumbles on the floors everywhere, so disheartening. Within a few minutes I knew I was through, it was all over, finished and gone and done, and the end so final. Because, what killed it, was the liquefaction, its definition coming up from a pressurized water table displaced by the earthquake, close to surface so near the estuary, carrying the sandy, dark gray silt up and flooding the shop. Every single book that touched, even by a corner, that saturated carpet - was a goner, finished and done, water the destroyer of books. Even if I'd wanted to stay and try to get through, no way, everything would have to come out anyway with the sodden carpets. So it is all over, I'm done.

Oh, I'll end up saving over half of them, but years of bookscouting, collecting in the far corners of the globe, thousands of books gone in an instant. And this is a reality that cannot be changed. When I'd registered with the Red Cross, I only had Grace's name for closest next of kin, since I don't belong to anyone. I realized then that really, my best friend had become my books - and now they were drowned and lifeless, and anyway, to hell with them, they can't hug anyway and they don't understand me either. I had a good time, there are moments I'll remember like someone special.

There are no hugs around, it seems, when you only need just one. Distress walks better with comfort, sorrow better with love too. I miss all of you I'm addressing this note to - I see you with new eyes.

Colin came back to his house, and is putting me up in a fine bed in a room downstairs until I fly out of here. I slept so hard I didn't even feel the two big aftershocks Colin told me happened during the night.

There were a couple of lines in that beautiful note I had opened first: "Our lives are more fragile and precarious than we can bear to know", and, "Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" If there had been any tears left, they would have fallen then, but it just made me deliriously happy; my god what kindness of friendship bestowed. Then I read all the others, and my life brightened into what is really important.

Well, we have life, we have love, we have each other. Little things like a cup of water, a plate of food, a shower, the kindness of strangers, all take on a heightened value and appreciation when a natural disaster befalls us. We re-evaluate everything. We love and respect the power of Nature, of ocean blue and mountain white. Alive and happy and able to love, hey, what else could you want, except the little things, maybe a little hug.

Love To All, Bill

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