Island Bay

So this was when the earthquake struck. Since the quake, from talking to people, it would seem the experience varied considerably depending on where people lived and the type of house they lived in. Some felt the shake but nothing so bad as to make things fall and others, like us, felt like the house was going to collapse. I will just tell it as it played out as best I can along with a few bits we have since learnt. One thing for sure that news coverages misses out an awful lot!

The first I knew of the earthquake was hearing Justine say "oh, is that an Earthquake?" I had just finished putting on shoes and started walking and couldn't feel anything before then, Rachel though agreed and when I stopped I could feel the shake under my feet. It very quickly went from a rumbling shake at this point to a heavy, rolling, lurching movement which had Justine running to the doorframe yelling that "oh shit, this is a big one".
We just blindly followed suit, having no idea what to do in a quake and just in panic mode really. I remember gripping the doorframe with Rob infront of me and Justine, who I couldn't really see, in front of him, all three of us squished in and trying to stay upright. It was hard to stay balanced and I looked across the room to see Rachel hiding under the pinball table by the glass doors that led outside. She was just crying out for Dave, her fiancé, in a panic, who seemed to have followed James to the other side of the room to be near the kids and shelter in their bedroom door frames.

The lurching once again got worse and it felt a lot more now like we were lurching and rocking/shaking all at once. You could hear the house shaking and the feeling of the violent rocking was so frightening. This was also when things started to fall. Right by us was the shelving unit with bottles of expensive alcohol and other such things which slid off their shelves and smashed on the floor by our feet. I remember involuntarily wailing in surprise and fear at this point as each thing fell and just trying to cover my face with my arms just in case. There was fish tank between us and Rachel and the fish tank lid kept lifting up violently with water spilling out all over the floor. This was one reason for Rachel's panic and crying out. She was at floor level, with nothing to grip onto, a pinball table lurching about above her, glass bottles smashing at her eye level and a glass door that could have smashed beside her head at any time. I just remember her sounding more panicked at this point and hearing Dave yell loudly at her (I now know he yelled at her not to move as she had asked about running to him, a bad move during a quake), and then she just fell silent. Just the noise of the rumbling quake and the entire house shaking now.

It seemed to go on and on and on and on, at the point everything was smashing around us I felt quite sure the house couldn't possibly keep holding out and was just terrified it was going to collapse on us all. Talking to everyone since, I wasn't the only one, it was incredibly long for an earthquake (110 seconds) and was stronger and longer by a long long way than anything the locals had ever experienced before.

Eventually though the shaking stopped, well on the ground at least, all of us were left shaking like a leaf, uncontrollable shaking that passed for some, but for myself, Rachel and the kids did not let up in the end for a couple of hours. This wasn't helped by the constant aftershocks and the threat of a tsunami which had me even more scared.

The aftershocks came one after the other every minute or less and had us all running to and for the door frames so often that I ended up just staying in the doorframe of one of the kids rooms. The children are pretty well prepared at school for this but one of their younger boys was particularly shook up and upset and k have to say it was only because of trying to calm him down that I didn't just burst into tears myself.

We had the radio on and were looking for updates online almost immediately. It came in as a high 6 magnitude at first, which Justine could not believe was high enough (she was correct, it was two quakes simultaneously and a 7.8 just 15km deep). The initial tsunami warning was that there was none, but the advice is also to just get to high ground after such a big quake regardless of warnings, and we were only a block of houses from the sea. This just made me nervous, I didn't want to overreact but I also didn't want to be amongst the people that stay still and then get hurt, or die. The radio after some time started to announce the evacuation warning and despite a couple of the guys not wanting to go we grabbed bags and made a move to evacuate up the hill. It seems silly now I know the tsunami was only a metre and just hit the beach but on the drive I just couldn't help thinking about a silent wave creeping towards us in the pitch black. Makes it worse when you have no idea where you really are. There were lots of cars and people all heading the same way and we ended up parked on a hill away from any power lines etc, just in case of another quake. We sat for about half an hour here and I think at this point I started to message that we were safe. Online it said we had to wait until morning before going back due to more tsunamis and when we heard one of the local bays had gone out 200m we realised we had to stay put. Justine and James made a call to a friend and despite having a few months old baby, they agreed to let all 9 of us (four of us basically strangers) to sleep at theirs until morning.
We all started to feel a bit calmer at this point, but the shaking from aftershocks prevented me getting any sleep really. I did get to see a beautiful sunrise though.

By morning and in the light everything seemed less scary and fortunately the tsunami occurred at low tide and did not each past the beach. We had a cup of tea and everyone else worried about work and school, which all turned out to be closed. Just as well really as no one was in a fit state for it. The CBD was completely closed too so the city would be asleep for the day.Read more