[Fists] Quake in New Zealand

[Stan Reas]

From: Ralph Sutton [mailto:zl2aoh at ihug.co.nz] 
Sent: 23 February 2011 06:31

Re your inquiry about the quake, the attached report from a Christchurch radio amateur gives a good first-hand picture of the event and aftermath.

The total fatalities are likely to exceed those of the Napier earthquake in 1931 when 256 died. Hundreds of rescuers are searching collapsed buildings for survivors and, sadly, bodies.

Ralph
-------- Original Message -------- 
Subject: 
 [ZLHAMS] a terrible day for CHCH
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2011 21:04:36 -0000
 
From:  Simon L <gm4plm at hotmail.com>
 
To:  ZLHAMS at yahoogroups.com

wow what a day - probably the blackest day in NZ history :(   I think this probably is worse than anyone could have imagined.
 
just a few hours ago a mag 6.3 quake took another swipe at Christchurch city ... this one much closer to the city and much more aggressive.
 
Unlike last time I was at work in one of my customer sites in the central business district and what a frightening event that was!
 
Sitting in my 6 floor office I have or more so, "had" ,a lovely view of the 110 year old lovely anglican cathedral and the beautiful square.
 
That changed in minutes as the 6.3 quake hit it shook my office to bits, room tiles, monitors, PC's came crashing down, water pipes in the ceiling burst as the building shook off its foundation.
 
Next door a building collapsed and crashed into ours at ground level ending up lodged across it.
 
I took shelter under my desk as we are taught here but all I could hear was this huge rumbling and crashing as the buildings in the square came down around us. Our building through some miracle and a touch of good quake engineering stayed up right.
 
As soon as the shaking stopped we started evacuating but my first thought was, as I looked out the window' how foggy it was in the square .. only to realise that this was fog but masonry dust ... a second glance revealed that the cathedral was gone, the spire collapsed into the square and back into the cathedral itself.
 
Evacuating the building in darkness we waded through deep water and a severe smell of gad in the basement and out into the square.
 
Christchurch is a big tourist centre on the NZ map and we have a lot of visitors too just now as its the Ellerslie Flower Show in the Garden City soon, so the city was very busy, combined with events like a major doctors conference, the city was really packed with tourists.
 
It was instantly obvious that there was a lot of injured around and I started first aiding a whole bunch not far from the office including a poor old gentleman from Scotland and his wife, who had a wall collapsed on him in a building opposite ours. He was in a bad way with obvious multiple traumas so I got some people to help comfort him while I tried to see to others who were started collecting around us in a small triage area.
 
We spoke to a police constable who was trying to help but he was having problems raising an ambulance , so we commandeered some 4x4 van and a "ute" and loaded about 6 people into them and made our way to hospital.
 
The hospital was very busy - there are lots of injured people ... some obviously very badly - at the moment that fatality number stands at 65 ... they are still searching many buildings that have collapsed - some completely destroyed - many fatalities were from falling masonry which crushed cars, buses etc
 
some buildings have collapsed from 6 floors down to 1 .... a lot of people are missing and things don’t look good - some buildings are still on fire this morning, lots still missing in collapsed buildings and USAR teams are busy crawling across these now.
 
Many of the bridges across the Avon river in the city are damaged, power to 70 pc of the city is out and damaged, many roads are buckled and twisted. Many gas mains broken etc.
 
I guess on a personal note is that my fiancee, our boys and close family are fine, colleagues etc all managed to get out ok despite damage to our building.
 
Like many I had a long walk out of the city and after some time managed to hook up with Chrissy and the boys - my sister is also ok - she was at the Uni . some way from the CBD.
 
Having been through the 7.1 in September 4 this was way bigger in terms of destructive force and the damage it has caused.
 
The central business district looks like it has been through the blitz, many of the historic buildings that survived the previous quakes and shocks simply could not take any more and simply collapsed.
 
There was also a lot of newer buildings also could not take the hammering and also collapsed including the Canterbury TV station building, Pine Gould Guiness, Catherdral etc.
 
The local paper did not fair better either and sad to report the building of "The Press" collapsed too - lots of people also trapped there.
 
So that’s the news from CHCH this morning. Thanks for the mails and comments personally and on here. They are very much appreciated.
 thanks Simon ZL4PLM