One year ago today

It amazes me that it's a year. And I know I've said thatloads of time but it just does. Sometimes it feels like this is all new. Othertimes I struggle to remember what life is like without earthquakes. Was allthat just a dream? And so this moment seems like a special moment. It's thelast few moments before our lives changed. And so it seems a good moment tothink about what exactly has changed and I think the best way to list thatwould be in the things I've learnt this year.

In no particular order, I have learnt:

- That earthquakes sometimes have a sound, a low rumble, ora loud roar

- Sometimes earthquakes don’t have a rumble; sometimes theyjust hit your house (and make you have to go change your knickers!)

- That the sound earthquakes have can sound just like manyother sounds we never noticed, like trucks, wind, trains, sliding doors, catdoors swinging...you name it, I can mistake it for an earthquake

- The word liquefaction and what it means

- What the Mercallli scale is

- That telling me the Richter scale measurement of anearthquake is not enough; I need to know depth and proximity to civilisationbefore I make a judgement.

- The pure panic you can feel when you realise you don’thave your cellphone with you

- The generosity that humans have the capacity for in timesof disaster

- The complete lack of empathy and sympathy andunderstanding that disasters can highlight in some people!

- That the feeling of the moments sometimes simply can’t beexplained: trying to find my niece and nephew after Feb 22^ndearthquake is one but also the moment at the memorial service when the usar andother volunteers arrived and everyone spontaneously stood applauding them. Orthe moment I realised our September earthquake had be stronger than the Haitiearthquake.

- The pure panic when you realise you don’t have any bottledwater left

- That even a 7.1 earthquake and a state of civil emergencycan’t get you a day off work sometimes!

- That some people are idiots. There’s no other explanation.You can’t predict earthquakes. The earthquakes are not caused by some randomexperiment in Australia. The earthquakes are not caused by drilling for oilsand minerals. Oh that list could go on.

- That Earthquake Brain is real and valid

- That the ability for the human brain to shut down and notlet you understand or comprehend is actually an absolute blessing sometimes. Ithink about that Tuesday as I stood in front of the CTV building trying to workout what I was looking at and seeing that massive fire etc and I am so relievedI didn’t understand. That I didn’t know over 100 people were dying right infront of me in varied and cruel ways. And that I can’t remember some thingsfrom that day.

- That miracles happen. I have no other words for my findingChrissy among the thousands of people that day. No other explanation. And thenthat the first time I tried to call James when he wasn’t replying to my textsthat I got through to him. It wasn’t me,it wasn’t fate, it wasn’t luck, it was a miracle.

- That we adapt. Well our sleeping does. I thought sleepingthrough a 4 was impressive, this week we almost slept through a 5! Well we wokeup but only enough to go wow that was big and go back to sleep!

- That how far you are from the epicentre greatly affectshow strong it feels to you

- That you can get really good at guessing location andmagnitude of earthquakes. For example, if there’s no rumble then chances are it’sreally close to you. Or if there is swaying afterwards then it’s probably quitea way from you.

- That the Rumble to Earthquake and Epicentre relationshipis like the Lightning to Thunder and Storm relationship. The bigger the gap betweenlightning and thunder the further away the storm is. The more of the rumble youhear before you feel the quake, the further away the epicentre is.

Ok I really could keep going with this one but I think it’stime to stop! I think I’ve got my point across: this year has been truly eventfuland we have learnt so much. Some of it funny, some of it painful, some of ituseful, some of it downright useless.

This is not a year we will ever forget. I hope it is also ayear that we never repeat!

Who are these people???

Who reads my blog?? Sometimes I go to the stats section and it shows all these countries where people have been viewing my blog from. I would LOVE to know some of my readers. Write me a comment! Tell me your name, location and how you found me. (Oh God please let someone read this and comment)

To give you an idea, here are my stats for countries for this last week only:

 If I could add a background song you'd be hearing "Whooooo are you...who who who who" (think CSI).

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

I feel like maybe I'm getting there. Like the months after the earthquake were in the dark and that maybe I can see the stairs now.

My beautiful niece has put her experience down and I think it is well worth a read.

Chrissys Earthquake Story

Better get the Tena out...

Possibly the best blog post ever!

Rokocoko decides he LOVES the snow!

Understandably Impossible to Understand

It is very rare that you know exactly what everyone in your family is doing at a given moment when you are all in different places. Like right now, I have an idea but I couldn’t tell you exactly what they were all doing. But I can tell you for the moment of 12.51pm on Feb 22^nd 2011.

Dad – had just gone inside for some lunch

Mum – about to open the door at Coffee Culture Beckenham

Deb and Annie Rose – driving on Opawa Road, coming up to St Marks church

James – sitting by the Bridge of Remembrance

Chrissy – walking up Cashel Street from Cashel Mall, coming up to the Hotel Grand Chancellor

David – by Pak n Save Moorhouse

Me – Standing in Dee’s office

Reuben – at Opawa School

Tahu – working at a house in Opawa with another guy

And we know that moment and we will never forget that moment and the moments (minutes, hours, days, weeks, months…) afterwards. And we actually all know what we were doing at 4.36am on Sept 4^th 2010 as well. Although that one is pretty easy to work out! We were all in bed! (Different ones in most cases!).

It is coming up a year. I’m dreading it to be honest. I can’t even get my head around that first one but that we have had over 8300 (and counting) since just blows my mind. And as it should. Life in New Zealand is amazing, we are so lucky, if not the luckiest! We have an amazing mix of Island life as well as being a leader in the world in many areas. And now we are almost a year into it and life is continuing as normal! There is still life, death, happiness, sadness, successes, failures, exciting stuff, boring stuff. I feel like it should all stop! Like it’s disrespectful to the huge change in our lives!

I wrote a post a while ago about all the questions I had and some of those are answered but there’s many more in their place. Like will I ever not flinch when a truck goes past? Will I ever be able to look at a building and not judge it on its earthquake safety and what would happen if it fell? Will I ever see a construction or building site and not think “Earthquake Damage” and the same with cracks in the pavement?

Recently the plan for Christchurch was released and it looks amazing. There are high hopes and great plans in place. It will be an amazing place but it is a long way away. 15-20 years in some cases. Christchurch will be great but it’s going to take a while. It was a nice moment when I realised that reading that proposal made me feel good about being in Christchurch for the first time in months.

September was bad, I’ll never forget that. But when I think about that first morning as I lay on the couch in the lounge with Nat, Madi, Odette and Tahu and listened to them all sleeping I’m amazed at how naïve I was of what was to come. That is the beauty of not knowing the future though isn’t it. If I had known what was to come I don’t know if I could have handled it. I remember thinking how if this wasn’t over soon I’d get in the car and go and drive and find a big empty paddock or park and sleep in the middle of it without fear of something falling on me. I had no idea!!

I remember that day when we finally got power back and going straight online to see how ours compared to Haiti and that sick and shocked feeling when we realised ours was worse. Slightly stronger, slightly shallower, a million times less destructive.

And watching youtube videos of Chile and again feeling sick and in shock as this time I could feel what they felt. You can’t understand a massive earthquake until you’ve actually felt one. The Te Papa Earthquake House has nothing on a real one!

Recently I became aware that there are people reading this blog looking for bad things, either that I say or that have happened to me and it put me off writing about how there’s earthquakes are affecting me because I hated the thought of someone being pleased with it. But I realise now that it’s their issue not mine and that it is better for me to get this written down and that it may help others. I find that as soon as I say “I’m not handling it well” that almost always people will agree and start sharing how they are feeling and their experiences. There’s not a single person here who isn’t changed by what has happened. I definitely am. But somehow, sometime, I have to make that change a positive. But you’d have thought a year on it would be all done and over!