Note To Future Self

The short answer: Everyone’s fine and the house is still standing. We’ve had power and water continuously, but no internet. We’re still boiling water and flushing judiciously.

Anna writes:

The past few days

It was a hectic week last week. My soccer club’s annual prize giving was on friday night, and somehow I wound up in sort of in charge. It went well, although I was bone-weary when I crawled into bed at eleven.

At about 4:40 am I awoke with a thought. “boy, that’s a really heavy freight train”, quickly followed by “we don’t live near the tracks”, followed by “OMG! doorframe!”

After gathering my wits in the doorway, I dashed to the bean sprout’s room. Other than a fat lip and a bruised arch, this achieved nothing, as the quake was over by the time I arrived. She was crying when I pulled her out of the cot, but when I set her down in our room she said ‘wow’ and hopped into our bed, ready to nurse.

The power flicked back on. We turned on radio new zealand national. After about 15 minutes of listening to the host read her text messages aloud, during which we learned that ‘a stuffed cat’ had fallen on someone’s head in otago, we decided that the earthquake must have been centered in dunedin. With no evident damage to our house, we decided the most sensible thing to do would be to go back to bed.

We awoke to a beautiful spring day, and the news that we were in the middle of the disaster area. After a full inspection the extent of the damage was revealed as one (1) broken vase, a crack in the kitchen ceiling that might or might not be new and a new crack in the chimney.

After a stroll around the neighborhood to check on our neighbors (all fine), see if the civil defense post had any information or was looking for volunteers (no and no) and do a little rubber necking (the liquor store reeked, and the engravers we used for the prize-giving was completely demolished), there was really nothing for it but to head home, make some lunch and mow the lawn.

Lessons learned

1. if there is a power on earth that can keep kiwis from driving like idiots for no good reason, it is greater than a 7.1 earthquake
2. If the whole city is being warned not to flush their toilets to to conserve water, someone will decide that hosing down their sidewalk is a critical use of precious resources.
3. earthquake straps for bookshelves are a really good idea.

We were one of the few neighborhoods that didn’t lose power, so other than the need to boil water, and a lingering worry about the integrity of the sewer network, we (individually and as a city) got off incredibly lightly. The one service we’re without at home, however, is teh internets, so posting will be light for the next few days.