Christchurch hit with another massive earthquake!

Rudiger · Post by **Rudiger** » Tue Feb 22, 2011 4:09 am

I just heard that Christchurch has once again been devastated by another massive earthquake, this time with multiple fatalities. My thoughts go out to all those affected. In particular I'm concerned about funksmaname who lives in Christchurch. I believe last time he said that he lived and worked further out from the city, but not sure how widespread the damage is from this earthquake. Funk, if your internet is still working, please let us know if you're OK!

sbtamu · Post by **sbtamu** » Tue Feb 22, 2011 4:55 am

Sadly there are confirmed deaths...

neeters_guy · Post by **neeters_guy** » Tue Feb 22, 2011 7:33 am

Damn, I hope he's okay...

cheyne · Post by **cheyne** » Tue Feb 22, 2011 2:27 pm

It's terrible man, buildings toppled and everything. Unfortunately all communications are down and out. People can't even call emergency services, it's a really bad situation for people who are in trouble.

I hope he is well, but if he's close to trouble I think the last thing he'll be thinking of is saying g'day on the forums.

Best regards to the Funk

sbtamu · Post by **sbtamu** » Tue Feb 22, 2011 11:28 pm

I have hardly left my desk today watching the news but it seems most of the cable news networks are more interested in showing that nut from Libya more than whats going on in New Zealand.

funksmaname · Post by **funksmaname** » Thu Feb 24, 2011 10:07 am

Hey guys,
again - thanks for your concern. I'm happy to conferm that I'm fine, as is all my family.

We were living in Redcliffs to the south-east suburbs of the city, which was hardly touched last time but is one of the worse hit suburbs this time round.

I wasn't there when it happened, I was in Lyttelton which is the reported epicenter :S I just left a cafe and was on my way to the car when it hit, i wobbled towards the middle of the road as there were piles of bricks coming down from buildings all around, it was pretty freaky!

So I managed to speak to Ana, my other half, who was at the house with the dog (infact i was on the phone to her when it hit just saying i'll be home soon)... she got under the table, and then out - there were 2 big ones about 10 minutes appart, and after she got out during the 2nd shake huge boulders came down the cliff face and smashed into the house. They put a hole in the back wall and destroyed the downstairs toilet! Anyway she was safe.

I was stuck in Lyttelton for about 7 hours not knowing what to do - the 2nd quake made even more walls collapse, clouds of smoke coming into the street. THe problem was the most direct route home, through a tunnel, was closed for obvious reasons. The only way home was a huge detour and my car had next to no petrol! Luckily I have some friends in lyttelton and one of them had a canister of about 5litres which he gave me.

I went straight to my sisters, where shortly after Ana arived having been picked up by my parents. We are now living with my parents - the house (which we were renting) is pretty fucked, we won't be able to live there (it'll probably take months to fix with everything else that's going on)

My parents house has internet electicity and water, we're so lucky! We went and picked up our computer bits from the house today so slowly setting up a base here so we can continue to make money with our UK clients.

Anyway - we're all good, tired - the city is in pieces - we might mve out of town, we have to look for another place but there are lots of people without homes, i don't know if there are enough options, depite the fact the whole town will be closed for the forseable future...

Regards to all,
Funksmaname (Danny)

cheyne · Post by **cheyne** » Thu Feb 24, 2011 10:54 am

Geez that's a scary story man! I'm glad you are OK bud.

I guess this means a whole bunch more NZers will be shifting over to Australia? (just jokes, trying to keep it light, ha

)

funksmaname · Post by **funksmaname** » Thu Feb 24, 2011 8:34 pm

heh, you're not wrong...
not us though, we only moved to NZ 1 year ago (almost to the day)
Besides, you've had your fair share of natural disasters recently!

dunno if there's much to stay in ChCh for for a while though...

cheyne · Post by **cheyne** » Fri Feb 25, 2011 5:46 am

Well if you decide to move, you can couch surf at my place, haha.

Mikdog · Post by **Mikdog** » Sat Feb 26, 2011 2:04 am

wowzers.

Rudiger · Post by **Rudiger** » Sat Feb 26, 2011 7:11 am

Thanks so much for letting us know that you and your family are OK, Funk. Sounds like it could have been a lot worse

!

I definitely wouldn't carry on living there, though. There's no guarantee that there won't be yet another earthquake in a few months. Perhaps when they rebuild the city, they should move it to a more stable location! At least with your job, you can pretty much live anywhere you want

!

Rhoel · Post by **Rhoel** » Sat Feb 26, 2011 2:01 pm

Good to hear you survived okay ... been through two 6+ quakes (Australia and Thailand) and they're not fun, just a case of hanging on and waiting for mother nature to finish reminding you how insignificant and helpless you are.

Good luck with the rebuild.

Rhoel

funksmaname · Post by **funksmaname** » Sat Feb 26, 2011 11:39 pm

Thanks guys,
yeah we're thinking we might move out of ChCh for a year or two - it won't be back to normal for at least that long and we may as well move aside for construction people to move into town... we did like it here though, once it's rebuilt it would still be a nice place to live - but 'the moon guy' is predicting another big one in march so dunno if we should leave just in case

problem is there's 8 of us (+2 dogs) in 3 families and I think me and Ana are the most keen to move out.

we'll see what happens i guess

sbtamu · Post by **sbtamu** » Sat Feb 26, 2011 11:55 pm

Earth Quakes scare the life out of me, even more than tornadoes. I have been in 2 quakes, one in Spain where I was born and one in Hawaii where I just moved from. Both were in the 6's I believe.

The one in Hawaii, I was sitting at my desk and I thought someone was behind me shaking my chair. I would rather live through 100 tornadoes than another earth quake.

The main reason we moved back to Texas is my wife was so scared after the Hawaii earth quake that she was afraid to go into buildings.

funksmaname · Post by **funksmaname** » Sun Feb 27, 2011 9:02 pm

yeah, the unpredicability is the problem... the first quake in Sept was a 7.1 but hit at 4am and no one was hurt - damage wasn't that bad considering. The one last week was only a 6.2 but the damage was incredible...

...guess size doesn't matter after all