Christchurch Earthquake

Sept 4th earthquake was the Canterbury earthquake, Feb 22 is the Christchurch earthquake.

I have wanted to post about so many things

but they all came back to one thing,

my friend Jo.

Jo has been missing since

12.51pm 22 Feb

She works in the CTV building on the 2nd floor.

She hasn't been heard from.

I can't type what I'm thinking

and I know to be true.

I understand why they stopped searching

but it seems so unfair.

When they ended the search they did it because

there had been no sound from within the crushed building for 11 hours,

the Hotel Grand Chancellor on a lean waiting to collapse only a block away,

but to stop was to give up hope.

They are searching again now but for bodies not people.

Having said that,

there is much to do

and Jo would be leading the charge if she could.

Today I was at the Canterbury A&P Showgrounds

helping Fed Farmers to organise volunteers into teams

to start digging Christchurch out of the silt

that has oozed and set everywhere.

500 volunteers came

and tomorrow 1500 are expected.

Heavy machinery couldn't be used just now

because most of the streets

(not an exaggeration)

have water or sewerage flowing over the street surfaces

so the streets stink and are sinking.

(that's wet, seeping sewerage and the Westpac is not secure,

maybe about to collapse so there are security guards are standing in the stinkyness).

Great holes in the roads are open to the skies,

square feet bubbles of liquefaction are hiding under the surface of the road.

  

Driving anywhere means sudden drops and rises.

Banks have slumped into the rivers and streams.

The rivers and strerams are now sewers

because there are few working sewers

Corner shops have crumbled but so have new malls.

Christchurch will be bereft of fish and chip shops

and dairys for a while I think.

So many jobs have disappeared.

Then there are the houses.

Whole streets of homes will be condemned.

On this street all the houses had damage.

How can you call on you neighbours when this is what their house is like?

Then there's the three men who were removing an organ

from a condemned church

condemned from the Sept 4th earthquake,

that were crushed to death when the church collapsed.

These men weren't even from Christchurch.

Today after working at the A&P Showgrounds,

Emz, Lisa and I jumped in the ute

and dropped off water to Val

and strangely,

10 boxes of smoked chickens to a welfare centre.

We first went to Pioneer Stadium welfare civil defence centre

which was organised bedlam.

There Mike the staff manager told us

to see if we could sneak it in

because the Sallies were not letting food in

unless it was prepared by their volunteers.

We couldn't,

 so just took it over to Sallies Linwood foodbank

to be prepared by their volunteers

and probably returned to the Pioneer Stadium tomorrow.

 So tomorrow we are expecting 1500 farmers

and it will be busy from 6.30am,

good busy though.