What have we learnt from the last month

Hadn't realised it's been nearly two years since I updated this. Should make a better effort.

Anyway, the last month has been *interesting* for us Cantabrian's. As many people will know, on the 4th of September, most of us were shaken from our beds to the tune of Magnitude 7.1. For me it was a bit of a blur. I was sort of asleep at 4:35, but I wasn't sound asleep as 10 minutes before, one of our cats wanted desperately to go outside. Then my wife decided work was more important than sleeping. So just as I went back to sleep - RUMBLE, then BANG.

I grabbed my dressing gown and attempted to go to our sons room, but I'm pretty sure I was thrown off my feet and found it difficult to get through the door. In fact I have difficulty remembering much as it went on for so long. One thing I was sure of at the time was this was a big one.

I didn't know how big it was. I didn't know where it was. A chilling thought entered my head that hundreds possibly thousands could be dead. By the miracle of timing, no-one died but at the time who knew? I said to my wife that the Alpine fault had ruptured. I had read about it only two days before.

As things settled, I worked out the house was fine and we were safe. Despite the fact the kids both had torches, neither of them had them around at the time, so our daughter got the torch while our son had the iPod screen for light. Aftershocks followed pretty quickly but compared to the main shock, they felt small despite the fact they were in the vicinity of 5.6.

From there I had to find out what was going on. We had a battery radio that was on at the time so we listened to Vicky McKay on National Radio. As the reports started to come in, it seemed to take on a North Island bias. "Sounds like a North Island event rather than a South Island event" was what Vicky said. However, it soon became apparent, it was not only South Island event but a very local event. In fact, very near Charing Cross between State Highway 1 and Darfield. And to Vicky's credit, she was cool and reassuring and slipped into emergency mode without missing a beat.

As the morning progressed, I dared to clean up as much of the broken glass as I could with the light that was available. At this stage, the earthquake was 7.4 and there was widespread destruction whatever that meant. Then there was the Morning Report music on the radio. This must be bad because there is a special Morning Report. Mary Wilson was on and there was a lot more info coming in. Apart from the power not being on, the enormity of what was happening hadn't really dawned on me. The sun started coming up and I ventured out. The neighbours were all fine, but the church around the corner had lost it's cross.

I had been awake for about four hours on this Saturday morning that we would never forget. And there was more to go.