Christchurch Earthquake
I was tempted to title this post Mortality but, I digress. On Tuesday, February 22nd, my husband and I were at our rented premises in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was about lunch time, I was finishing a report and nibbling at some pasta, he was heating his food. At first, we felt what seemed like an aftershock but when the rumbling continued and my food fell on the carpet, we ran out of the first-floor apartment, helter-skelter. Within minutes of coming outside the house, we felt what was a series of aftershocks. On further inspection, we found the whole neighborhood was ravaged but nothing sank in on the first day. We hardly slept that night and woke up at least a dozen times to more aftershocks. Sadly, we were stuck with a house-owner who came by to inform us that he expected us to pay rent.. we were not sure why he said that as most of our rent had been pre-paid. The power went off immediately after the first quake hit and we expected that it would be back in 24 hours or so. What followed was a bizzare nightmare of outlandish proportions, here is a brief recounting:
Our main door had sunk in and we couldnt open it without considerable force. What we did not notice on Tuesday (as there was no power after a while and it was pitch dark and our nerves were frayed by the time nigthfall came) was a huge crack in our bedroom wall and in several other places in the building. We slept in a little space (with our legs folded) with the door slightly ajar on Tuesday night. It was bitterly cold outside (by our standards) and we just couldnt bear to sleep in the open. It was no use as we hardly slept that night and were completely perplexed at what was happening. On the second day, it started to dawn on us that we had no running water, no electricity and no sewage. All these basic human necessities were down and it was not easy to gather when these would be back. As we had no access to TV, I had a radio on my music player, which I listened to for emergency news. We heard that 40 people were confirmed dead in the central business district and that our suburb was the worst hit, in terms of basic supplies. It also became amply clear to us that we were simply not safe in the house any more as our only exit was jammed shut and it was too cold to sleep outside at night. We also realized that the landlord knew that it would take a very long time to repair things and thats probably why the comment about rent surfaced, but, we didnt want to think negatively. The neighbors were helping each other out with well water and sharing barbeques for cooking and we were trying to stay very positive about the situation.
On Thursday, our cell phones ran out of power. I biked an hour to my friend’s house, which usually would have taken 20 minutes but, the roads were broken, there were police and emergency workers in some parts of town and traffic was moving very very slowly. There was a heck of a lot of dust and silt and mini water holes to get past. I couldnt believe my eyes. It looked like a war-zone to one part of town and then there was power in some other parts of town. I charged our electronics half-way and returned home, exhausted. We had also had cumulatively lost sleep and we were at our wits ends. While we considered ourselves very lucky to be alive, the aftershocks while reducing in frequency, had not reduced in intensity/violence. Added to this, our daily routine now consisted of walking to get water, filling water, boiling water and eating out of boxes and cans. We had no idea where to ask for help as we were not mobile. On Friday, we managed to get a ride to the local Civil Defense welfare center to register our case with the Red Cross and housing about feeling unsafe in the house and getting out of there. Most of our neighbors had started to leave as it was becoming evident that power would not return for weeks and the energy company was talking about running overhead lines in the area. Several areas of the city were being manned by large swathes of police and military from many different countries and the law-and-order situation seemed to be going South. In fact, within an hour of the quake, when we were returning from a little walk (as we preferred being outside) we saw some people steal milk and frozen items from the local gas station. Air New Zealand had also started to offer 50$ flights to people that wanted to leave Christchurch but neither could we get them on the phone nor did we know how to make it to the airport with no means of transport.
We then continued to clean up our apartment (as our house owner returned to check if we were still in the apartment, several times, while never offering to give us any help to get to where local churches had organized free food and drinking water) for two days and decided to move to safer grounds.
My best friend lost his coach and his neighbor. It has been a pretty senseless tragedy and I listened to the radio every day for hours, just to document the responses by major players. Ive only now realized that a lot of ideas in my PhD thesis, relating to the use of cell-phone technology for Emergency Response, are very valid. Throughout the entire time, we never had a group SMS notification about local efforts to supply food and water. Not everyone had a battery operated radio and news was not proliferating properly. Altruism I believe, is a function of time. While this brought out the best in many, it also brought out the worst in some. Im hoping to document this this but my head is in a tizzy! I dont really know how I am going to publicize my research but I am. In similar situations in India, the loss of life would cross 100,000 (given human density) and the response would be as poor, if not worse. We are very lucky because the trails I bike/run in had a rockfall and killed two people.
The only thing that kept us going was the daylight (I was terrified in the night-time with no power and reports of looting in abandoned homes), some hot food by a local church group in conjunction with the military and police and the friendly faces of the Red Cross Volunteers. Please donate generously to the Red Cross, for New Zealand. This country has given me so much and most of the people here are amazing people, resilient and very hard-working. I have no doubt they will be back on their feet however, major disasters come with a steady state time of about 5-7 years in terms of the aftermath. Ray Nagin, Mayor of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, didnt try to sugarcoat what it would take for the city to revive itself. But, here is to trying to do whatever little we can to help this along.
Im not a very smart person but I do know one thing, Passion is not for sale. My mom had turned down several amazing jobs saying “you couldnt pay me enough” (when referring to ownership) and what can I say, Im nothing original. Just a chip off the old block.. and Im OK with that. My grammie was even more free-willed, learning Sanskrit at age 53 when physically impaired… Stick your tongue out, live a little… its never too late! 
