10 Years Today...

 When We had our first Earthquake


It was a magnitude 7.1 earthquake, Saturday 4 September at 4.35 a.m. at a depth of 10 km. Centred 40km west of Christchurch.

Being woken up by a strong earthquake is rather scary not knowing what will happen next. All seemed so still as soon as it stopped, then all the car and house alarms went off. People were out on the street not knowing what had happen. It took ages before any news come out on the earthquake.

First thing in the morning we took a walk around our neighbourhood to see what damaged had been done. Everyone walking around seemed to be in a daze and the word I used on that day was .. "like stunned mullets".
Lots of buildings were badly damaged and chimneys had either fallen in to houses or fallen to the side damaging everything in their path. I found out also the house my son rented from me was badly damaged...beyond repair.

Only two people were seriously injured, one by a collapsing chimney and a second by flying glass in this earthquake. We never thought a few months later we would have a more damaging and deadly one.

In this collage are the photos I took on that morning plus the headlines in our newspaper this morning.

Here is a link to that earthquake if you want to read more about it.

This morning I saw my Orthopaedic Specialist. He said I do need knee replacements. He will refer me the Public Hospital but there is a chance they will turn me down. So its fingers crossed!.

Last night we had a reminder. ..With a 5.7 earthquake near the top of the South Island at 10:15pm. It was a good wobbly here.