Earthquake

This has been a shocking day for Canterbury.
We were awoken this morning at 4.35 am with the house shaking like a washing machine.
It seemed to go for about 5 minutes, and in that time the power went out as well. The noise was horrendous, and I thought that every window in our house was breaking, and that the house was falling down. We were surprised when we walked around the property that there was very little damage and there were no broken windows. A few things fell down and caused minor damage, but we were so lucky. There were many quakes after this, and we just waited for daylight.

Keeping up with phone calls and texts from family filled in some of the morning. We were lucky and had an old phone connected that did not need power. Cell phones were not to be used except for emergency.

We then had some visitors, but could not concentrate as I was worried about my sister out in the country - Charing Cross - right at the epicentre of the earthquake.
We drove out there, and it had been so frightening for them. The noise and movement from the earthquake was enormous, the sheep and lambs were bleeting, and even the possums were squealing.

I have probably squeezed in to much in my image but I wanted to show what was on TV, in the top row it is TV headlines, with the road broken up not far from my sister's farm, and also a very old house 'Homebush' in that area which used to belong to the first settlers of Canterbury - The Deans, and all the bricks have fallen out of the second storey.
On the bottom row, there is an image of my brother in law's office with paper strewn everywhere, and the middle picture, the bricks have fallen off the house, and the last one is a bedroom with the drawers fallen over and pictures on the wall askew.
The kitchen was a mess with fridge doors thrown open, oven out of the wall, microwave thrown onto floor, and the pantry shelves emptied, with jam, pickles and flour all mixed up. Red wine in the carpet, glass from cabinets every where, and amongst all this no power or water. We did what we could to help, but they will be left in darkness again tonight, and could be some days before the power is taken to the country.

They are alive and well, but shaken as we all are. But there are a lot of people much worse of than us, so we are to be thankful.
It has hit the children terribly as I know of ones who have vomited, wet their pants, and are so nervous that they cannot leave the side of their parents.
I feel for all these people.

Then on top of all this we have heard on the news that a plane has crashed in an aeroplane crash at Fox Glacier killing 9 people. So so sad all around.