Christchurch Earthquake Day6

Its been another interesting day, the day before we meet the 1 week anniversary since the ground shook.  We will take time to hold hands together and think of those who ended their time with us a week ago.

We started the day in fog but it soon cleared to show activity at the Colombo Peterborough St. intersection and the Australian Police Officer said the block may be cleared today.  It was not to be as it turned out.  The whole block looks really munted, and we hope that a few of the buildings are able to stay with us.

A rubbish truck drove up the street today.  They have a really distinctive whirr and everyone immediately know what it was.  The driver said they’d take anything so we and the neighbours all wheeled out as many full bins as we could.  We even refilled and dumped again! Great to see the council is getting things done and not sticking to rules too much.  Good on them!

The news is slowly coming out about which buildings we will be loosing from the CBD and the surprising thing is that some of the most modern buildings are also on the list.  It appears that the liquefaction do not discriminate and likes new buildings as much as old!

Today we have been talking by email with a few of our guests about room availability.  We have been asking people to not stay with us because we are behind the cordon, there is nothing to do here, we are concentrating on the rescue process, and we figured that most people should be able to arrive and drive straight out of Christchurch.  Similarly, we assumed that people would be able to drive directly to the airport instead of staying in Christchurch when leaving the South Island.  But today we had the case of a guest who would be joining and leaving a tour in Christchurch who needed 1 night at both the start and end of the tour.  We realise that cancelling at this stage would be difficult in some cases and so will be reviewing our requests inline with this. More info tomorrow.

As we close in on 1 week, I have taken particular notice of the 2 cars parked outside the motel that have not moved for 6 days.  One of these cars has a learner tag, probably indicating a young driver.  We hope the only reason they are here is because they can't get thru the cordon to pick them up.