In the last few days, Radio New Zealand released audio of a Christchurch reporter Bridget Mills, conducting an interview with someone in Libya. She all of a sudden exclaims "Big earthquake", with "Shit" thrown in a few times. Almost amazingly, she had the presence of mind to come back to the phone to apologise for the abrupt end to the interview. We listened to this at work and then to some of the initial reports from the Radio New Zealand website. Listening to those initial reports on the ground brought a lot of it back for me.
The initial thing for me straight after the earthquake was the chorus of alarms. It seemed that every building in the city's alarm was activated. It was briefly eclipsed by the rumble of the severe aftershock about 15 minutes after the main quake and the screams of people standing around, not sure what to do next. Many of those reports had those alarms going in the background.
As people left the central city, there were more sounds to remind us all that all was not well. There were more sirens than normal and more helicopters. Later on in the afternoon while walking the dog, I saw a helicopter flying very low over the Riccarton Mall. Almost as if it was doing a spot check from the air, looking for anything with obvious damage. Early the next morning a new sound that we all started to get used to - Iroquois helicopters flying low over the city. Iroquois have a very distinctive sound compared to other helicopters so it wasn't hard to tell when one was around. In fact Christchurch residents could be forgiven for mistaking Christchurch as the scene of a Vietnam War movie, that was how often they were flying around.
Sounds trigger memories and for many people, they are going to be transported back to that day every time they hear a building alarm.
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