Christchurch Earthquake Day 8

Wow! Have to say sorry to everyone!  Did not get to blog yesterday. Decide to have an early night so headed off to bed at 12 for a good nights sleep…NOT! Bloody aftershocks….8 during the night! I think I woke up for 5 of them….but in aggregate 7 hours sleep…the most since 22 Feb.

It’s been a full on 2 days with the motel being pretty much full, and lots of cancellations and booking enquiries.  The reality has become clear and there is far fewer accommodation options available in Christchurch post quake and we are adjusting to this.

But back to the disaster.

Life inside the cordon continues in its restricted way.  Life outside the cordon would definitely be easier!  I was able to walk up to Peterborough St to get a few pics.  Glad I did because it is not so easy to walk up there without being stopped by the police now.  Looking at what has been done, the destruction of a special part of Christchurch is almost complete.

Tuesday was 1 week since our lives irreversibly changed.  My god what a week, I don’t think I can remember a week with more in it!  We stood on Colombo St. to remember those who were no longer with us, we stood to think of the disaster that was visited on us….we stood.  From where we stood we could see the Cathedral Spire Stump, from where we stood it was only about 400 metres to the PGC building where so many had perished.  We stood in silence for 2 minutes but the tradesman across the road did not have his radio on and was noisy for the first minute!

Afterwards Naomi and I hugged each other and cried for everyone and everything.  One of our friends who we went to rugby games at AMI with was in the CTV building and no doubt there will be more people we know.  We also cried for what was not anymore.  We will go on and maybe it will be better but still we cried for what was not anymore.  We cried together and that was important.

And then we moved on, knowing that while we had paused, we will still have reason to pause again in the future. There are so many people and so much to remember!

This day, in the morning, we were visited by the USAR team.  They never visited us after the September 4 quake and so when a uniformed person with a sledgehammer turned up in the office saying *we are clearing the place,* we were of course surprised.  It took a few seconds to realise what was happening, at first we thought we were being evacuated for some reason! 

This was a part of the door to door central city search to confirm no-one was left anywhere.  They sprayed the driveway to show we had been checked!  And asked me quite a few questions!

In the afternoon we had some good earthquake entertainment with a bloody big digger racing up Salisbury St! 

Wednesday was also the day of the wind which stirred up the dust making a mask a necessity.  It got everywhere and was horrible. Thursday was just soo much better!!

This day I was also interviewed by The Press on life inside the cordon, went shopping for new microwaves and watched as the plans for the clean up continued!

More tomorrow…..