100 000 Homes

It's day 4 post earthquake. The city is returning to normal, sort of. Many roads are still closed, as are many businesses, school are now closed until Monday.

We have to boil drinking water, many hours are still without power, and around 1000 homes and 120 commercial building have been deemed uninhabitable. Today the demolitions started, all old heritage/character buildings. They believe up to 100 000 homes will need repair.

Tomorrow a few more demoitions are scheduled, and then it's rumoured some of the taller (17 story) office buildings.

We're running obviously and internally you'd never guess we'd had an earthquake. However, externally there are still several issues. We have no sewerage, meaning limited staff at present (using neighbours) and offices either side are at this point condemned or about to be demolished. We have another meeting tomorrow with the engineer and insurance agent to double check our green light status and hopefully sort out where to from here.

For the most part things are working OK at present, although clearly the "working from home on your own, after a major traumatic event" isn't ideal for some, for obvious reasons.

Tomorrow is a turning point for us, repair vs rebuild, despite the relatively minor damage. Seems the council may want all repaired buildings upgraded to 2010 standards. Clearly also the reality of what has happened is starting to strike home. Thousands of business affected, the time to rebuild is becoming a reality, and the stresses of such an event on people are becoming apparent. And we're a developed and more wealthy country. It's quite surreal, especially when last night there were a string of quakes in the 5,.4 range.

Funniest thing, after the second one the kids were getting very nervous. To diffuse the situation I suggested to Adam we play a "guess how strong the earthquake was" game. His reply ... "Dad ... this is serious".

Cracked me up! No, we didn't play the game, but yes, it definitely lightened their mood ;-)