Wow

From Stuff:

Environment Minister Nick Smith said the earthquake had released energy equivalent to 1000 Hiroshima atomic bombs.

"Engineers measure earthquakes by ground horizontal acceleration levels because it is these which actually cause damage to buildings," he said.

"The Canterbury earthquake recorded accelerations of 1.26 times gravity - it's like tipping up a building like this Parliament on its end and then putting it back again."

Dr Smith said those levels were the highest recorded in New Zealand and only very few of that size had been recorded globally.

Yeah, so that's pretty crazy. You know what else is crazy? There have been 556 aftershocks since last Saturday. You can follow along here or here.

Thankfully, they're slowing down. These graphs show the aftershocks from the last 24 hours (top) and since The Big One (bottom):


(a bigger version of this is here)

Earthquake survival kit

We're all shook up.

Aftershocks at 7:45 this morning left us with this:

The epicenter for this aftershock was practically in our backyard, and quite shallow, so even though this only registered as a 5.1 on the Richter scale, it felt much stronger. And it did as much or more damage than the original quake did - including knocking all these bricks off our house. All our picture frames were on the floor again (we haven't bothered putting them back up this time), the mayo jar tipped over in the fridge again. Our dining table moved a few inches, as did our big heavy desk. It's a small miracle that more things aren't broken. We only lost my Mexican 'circle of friends' candle holder; may it rest in peace.

There have been something like 250 aftershocks measuring 3.0 or more since Saturday morning. 250!!! We feel them all day and they wake us at night. We're getting a little batty.

Thankfully, we have our own version of an earthquake survival kit.

Every night this week, we've treated ourselves to red wine and Whittaker's chocolate. It settles the nerves. Sort of.

By the way, there were 2 more aftershocks in the 10 minutes it took me to write this post.

Earthquake

You may have heard we were a little shaken up here yesterday morning....

I had put the baby back to sleep after a feed and had just fallen back asleep myself. Suddenly, everything was loud and moving. I'm not really sure what we did. I think I said, "earthquake!" and ran to Quinn's room. Gareth looked out the windows. We obviously need some civil emergency training.

It was 4:35 in the morning and still dark. Gareth said he could see strange lights on the hills behind us, like the aurora australis or something. Probably electrical transformers blowing out?

After about 3 hours (okay, 40 seconds) the shaking stopped. My heart pounded out of my chest. I leaned my forehead against the door frame, panting. Quinn still slept.

Gareth called out from the dining room that the house was trashed. But it really wasn't that bad at all. Pictures had been thrown askew, some jumped off the wall. Stuff fell off the bookcases. The jar of mayo was on its side in the fridge...

We had no power so as soon as the sun came up, we bundled up and went out for a walk. No sense sitting in a cold dark house. We saw lots of people outside talking with their neighbors on the driveway. We saw people out running and biking or walking their dog. We saw almost no earthquake damage. One fallen chimney, one toppled fence. That was about it.

The power came back on around midday and we turned the tv on. This was when we realised that something huge had happened. We saw scenes of total destruction.

Now we're feeling a huge sense of disconnect as we watch the images of our city on tv and the internet. Our neighborhood looks completely normal. Yet all around us there's rubble and liquefaction.

Out there:

Here:

Out there:

In here:

We were so, so lucky.

The aftershocks keep coming. Just felt one as I was typing this. After 30 hours of them, they've gone from terrifying, to worrying, to just annoying. Stop moving, earth. Just stop it now.

My work is in the middle of the city. Judging from what we see on tv, that area was hit pretty hard. I don't know yet if my building is ok, but I suspect it will be as it's sort of newish, at least, new enough to be prepared for earthquakes. I just got a text telling me that we're closing for the week, and "You will be paid."

The prime minister was on tv last night to assure the people of Christchurch that the damage will be covered. We learned there is an Earthquake Commission in New Zealand. Everyone who has house or contents insurance will have their claims paid by the Commission. Mr Key told us that the Commission will cover the first $100,000 of each claim, and our insurance company will pay any claims over and above that amount. (We have nowhere near $100,000 in damage). So that sounds pretty good to us.

So our family is safe, the minor damage to our house will be taken care of, and I get a one-week paid holiday. All's well.

Diamond Harbour

I worked a short week this week and started the weekend early. Four day weekends: nothing wrong with that.

It was a nice day so we decided to take a little trip across Lyttelton Harbour to the town of Diamond Harbour. Here's a bird's eye view of the town, from its website. It's just a short ferry ride away.

I really like going to Lyttelton (we may have mentioned in the past how much we like Lyttelton). It's a working port, so you can see giant ships hauling stuff around. Coal, containers, logs. Lots of logs. I said, "I wonder where all the logs came from?" Gareth, ever so smart, replied: "Trees."



We weren't really sure where to go when we got off the ferry. We followed a lady who seemed to be walking with a purpose. She led us to a parking lot, where she got in her car and drove away. We had not done any research before going and really weren't sure where we were going or what we would do. We walked uphill and eventually came to what we suppose was the town centre. It had a "country store", a cafe, and a real estate office, and the smallest post office I'd ever seen (Gareth says he's seen smaller).

There was also this place, Godley House, which seems to be the main attraction.

It's a big house with a nice garden out back. It's a B&B, and it appears they also hold functions like weddings there. There's a cafe too, so we got some coffees and sat for a bit. My drink of choice right now: a trim cappuccino. Gareth's: a flat white. They're almost the same thing - I think the flat white just has less milk and no froth.

We then left Godley House and started wandering around. We found a nice trail that followed the edge of the harbour.

The trail led us right back to the ferry landing, and just as the ferry was approaching. What luck! A nice afternoon trip was had by all, although Quinn missed most of it as he was sleeping. He sleeps through all the good stuff it seems...

A walk on the beach

If there was some better way to spend my last day as a stay-at-home mum, I don't know what it could have been.

Shift change

The shift change happens this weekend. Gareth's last day of work is tomorrow, my first day back at work is Monday. Poor little Quinn is not going to have any idea come Monday morning why the One With The Boobs has left him, but we know he'll enjoy his time with the One With The Beard.

We are very lucky that my employer has encouraged me to work from home. In a conversation that may make my boss the greatest boss ever, she told me she knows how hard it is to go back to work with a new baby at home, and that I should work from home as much as I can. My job requires me to be in the office at least 1 day a week, and probably 2 days. But I should be able to work 2 or 3 days a week at home. We've bought a little desk for the spare room and I'm ready to set up my home office in there.

I know it's possible to work and breastfeed. All you need is some determination and a good breast pump. But how much easier will it be to continue breastfeeding if we can eliminate the middle man? Instead of pumping milk into bottles for Gareth to feed the baby, I can pump it directly into the baby. So much simpler. We really are lucky.

Gareth's super excited to take over the at-home parent gig. He's got big plans, including new veggie patches, runs with the buggy, and Monday man-dates with a daddy friend. My own plans for all I'd accomplish while at home did not really pan out. I thought I'd be climbing the Rapaki track every day, losing all the baby weight, and catching up with friends and family on Skype. Instead, I've climbed the Rapaki track 0 times (although there's a mean hill nearby that I go over once or twice on most of our walks, so that counts for something...), still have 20lbs to lose, and have been miserable at keeping up with friends and family in America (sorry guys). I spend most of the day feeding the boy, trying to get him to sleep, or thinking he is going to wake up at any minute. Hopefully Gareth will have more luck with his plans than I've had with mine.

I'm excited to get back to work and find out if my brain still works. Fingers crossed! But I'm also a little sad that my time as a stay-at-home mum is coming to an end. So long, Tuesday morning walks through the park with the boy and a cuppa.

Kaikoura

We took our first family trip this weekend: an overnight visit to Kaikoura. It's about 2 1/2 hours north of Christchurch, on the east coast. Perhaps this map will help illustrate:


View Larger Map

Kaikoura is known for whale watching, but we didn't do that. We just looked around a bit and visited a seal colony. Here's an overview of the town, as seen from a lookout point.

The seals are right there on the beach. You can walk right up to them and poke them in the face if you want to (not recommended). It's crazy. There were signs asking visitors to stay at least 10 metres away, but no one did. Not that people were touching the seals or anything, but they could have. The seals didn't seem too worried though.







Quinn wasn't terribly impressed.

We had heard there were gorgeous mountains nearby, but it was a cloudy afternoon and we couldn't see much. And then suddenly, the clouds broke and we saw them. Wow.

I mean, WOW.


Driving back south to Christchurch, we stopped a couple times to look out at the sea. It was particularly moody looking. Rain is so much more beautiful on a sea coast than inland.