So we're at this again ...
Jun. 14th, 2011 10:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rumpelsnorcackAnother interrupted night last night - in a now very familiar pattern I was woken up at around 3am by a large shake and couldn't get back to sleep for several hours. Thankfully the kids slept through all the aftershocks. We've been warned that this has set of yet another aftershock sequence of its own and yeah after yesterday I believe it. There were several overnight, but the 4.7 at 3am was the worst of them and all three kids just sort of snuffled and turned over in bed. That means, of course, that this morning they are all up and happy and bouncy and I feel like I need to sleep all day. I think I need a lot of caffeine right now.
We're back to boiling water again, which is really demoralising. I can only hope it will only be for a few days again rather than weeks like last time. From what I can gather from twitter power seems to be back on in my area but don't know about water. If it''s still off we'll just have to go down to the tankers that have already started coming back in, but that's something we won't know til we get back home. So long as there's power we'll be okay - without power we can't heat the house so can't really stay there.
Speaking of twitter, someone or some group has targetted the #eqnz hashtag for some horrible spam. It's really hard to locate much needed information in the stream when every second tweet is either about some stupid celebrity bollocks or some revolting porn stuff. Why someone would target something like that I don't know but it's frustrating when you're used to the tag being wonderful and helpful to be confronted with this stuff is yet another thing to demoralise the spirit. Whoever is doing this is showing incredible insensitivity for the situation at hand, but at least it didn't happen in February. However bad it is this time, it's not as bad as it was then.
Ironically, a few weeks ago the scientists told us there was a 23% chance of a size 6-7 quake and bam here it is. In January they said something similar and we got the 6.3 not much later. There are some wry jokes that the scientists need to keep those sorts of thoughts to themselves from now on, but mostly people were grateful to know that it was possible. This way it wasn't a shock and while scary wasn't over the top scary.
So, a bit more detail on what actually happened yesterday. I was in the car with a friend on our way to get a bed for Summer. We were discussing the vagaries of the breaks in the road on my street and had just swerved to avoid one of the potholes when the car swerved again. I assumed she'd just avoided another one and asked what it was because there hadn't been one in that part of the road before. But she just stopped in the middle of the road and said 'that was an earthquake' - and the road was still jiggling and I could see the powerlines swaying. It went on for such a long time we knew it was serious, so we immediately changed plans and went to school. Things looked pretty normal and we assumed we'd be just checking in on the kids and heading off again to complete our task. We were around 2 minutes away from school so we got there really fast and by the time we arrived all the classes were on the field and the teachers had them all ticked off on their sheets. It was all very organised and orderly. Some of the kids were very upset, but they were all being looked after by other kids and their teachers, which was really great. Summer looked pale and quiet but was adamant she wanted to stay at school. Seth was happy as larry and actually asked why we'd bothered to come down to school but Taylor was very worried. Of all of them he got tearful and thought he wanted to go home, then he didn't, then he did, then he didn't. He has been the one who is most affected emotionally from February, and has the hardest time expressing his emotions, and so his emotions were closest to the surface I guess. I feel so bad for the poor wee thing :-(
Anyway, we stayed at school for around an hour contacting everyone we could and making sure all the kids we knew were picked up and accounted for and arrived back at my friend's house at around 2.10pm. We were about to do some baking to feed all the extra strays we had with us when the 6.0 hit. The boys were outside and my friend was upstairs with Summer and I could hear her screaming for me but couldn't get up to her. I was actually on the phone with my mother who was alone and panicked after the first one, let alone the second one. It was quite eerie. I said 'oh, there's another one' and she kept talking, obviously not realising how bad it was then a few seconds later she started screaming down the phone line. Hearing the house I was in rattling and the house she was in rattling on the phone was a really weird feeling. As soon as it was over I had to hang up and get to Summer who while with my friend was beside herself - she had run towards the stairs to get to me and my friend had to grab and restrain her. She got very clingy afterwards and freaked out at every aftershock that hit over the next few hours. We got a call from mum around 4pm saying that the head of Orion had said that if we had no power at that point to expect the night without power and we made the decision to come to my parents' house for the night.
It's been very trying to be back in this space again but even though it's bad, and there's another big cleanup and a lot of the badly hit areas have been badly hit again, it's not as bad as it was in February. So I expect 'normality' (post quake normality that is) to return reasonably quickly. Hopefully school will be back by the end of the week and we can get back to getting back on our feet. I promised a few weeks back to always say something positive in these posts but apart from the knowledge that this isn't as bad as last time, I can't really think of anything. Sorry.
We're back to boiling water again, which is really demoralising. I can only hope it will only be for a few days again rather than weeks like last time. From what I can gather from twitter power seems to be back on in my area but don't know about water. If it''s still off we'll just have to go down to the tankers that have already started coming back in, but that's something we won't know til we get back home. So long as there's power we'll be okay - without power we can't heat the house so can't really stay there.
Speaking of twitter, someone or some group has targetted the #eqnz hashtag for some horrible spam. It's really hard to locate much needed information in the stream when every second tweet is either about some stupid celebrity bollocks or some revolting porn stuff. Why someone would target something like that I don't know but it's frustrating when you're used to the tag being wonderful and helpful to be confronted with this stuff is yet another thing to demoralise the spirit. Whoever is doing this is showing incredible insensitivity for the situation at hand, but at least it didn't happen in February. However bad it is this time, it's not as bad as it was then.
Ironically, a few weeks ago the scientists told us there was a 23% chance of a size 6-7 quake and bam here it is. In January they said something similar and we got the 6.3 not much later. There are some wry jokes that the scientists need to keep those sorts of thoughts to themselves from now on, but mostly people were grateful to know that it was possible. This way it wasn't a shock and while scary wasn't over the top scary.
So, a bit more detail on what actually happened yesterday. I was in the car with a friend on our way to get a bed for Summer. We were discussing the vagaries of the breaks in the road on my street and had just swerved to avoid one of the potholes when the car swerved again. I assumed she'd just avoided another one and asked what it was because there hadn't been one in that part of the road before. But she just stopped in the middle of the road and said 'that was an earthquake' - and the road was still jiggling and I could see the powerlines swaying. It went on for such a long time we knew it was serious, so we immediately changed plans and went to school. Things looked pretty normal and we assumed we'd be just checking in on the kids and heading off again to complete our task. We were around 2 minutes away from school so we got there really fast and by the time we arrived all the classes were on the field and the teachers had them all ticked off on their sheets. It was all very organised and orderly. Some of the kids were very upset, but they were all being looked after by other kids and their teachers, which was really great. Summer looked pale and quiet but was adamant she wanted to stay at school. Seth was happy as larry and actually asked why we'd bothered to come down to school but Taylor was very worried. Of all of them he got tearful and thought he wanted to go home, then he didn't, then he did, then he didn't. He has been the one who is most affected emotionally from February, and has the hardest time expressing his emotions, and so his emotions were closest to the surface I guess. I feel so bad for the poor wee thing :-(
Anyway, we stayed at school for around an hour contacting everyone we could and making sure all the kids we knew were picked up and accounted for and arrived back at my friend's house at around 2.10pm. We were about to do some baking to feed all the extra strays we had with us when the 6.0 hit. The boys were outside and my friend was upstairs with Summer and I could hear her screaming for me but couldn't get up to her. I was actually on the phone with my mother who was alone and panicked after the first one, let alone the second one. It was quite eerie. I said 'oh, there's another one' and she kept talking, obviously not realising how bad it was then a few seconds later she started screaming down the phone line. Hearing the house I was in rattling and the house she was in rattling on the phone was a really weird feeling. As soon as it was over I had to hang up and get to Summer who while with my friend was beside herself - she had run towards the stairs to get to me and my friend had to grab and restrain her. She got very clingy afterwards and freaked out at every aftershock that hit over the next few hours. We got a call from mum around 4pm saying that the head of Orion had said that if we had no power at that point to expect the night without power and we made the decision to come to my parents' house for the night.
It's been very trying to be back in this space again but even though it's bad, and there's another big cleanup and a lot of the badly hit areas have been badly hit again, it's not as bad as it was in February. So I expect 'normality' (post quake normality that is) to return reasonably quickly. Hopefully school will be back by the end of the week and we can get back to getting back on our feet. I promised a few weeks back to always say something positive in these posts but apart from the knowledge that this isn't as bad as last time, I can't really think of anything. Sorry.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-13 11:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-14 12:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-14 12:09 am (UTC)You and your family are okay. Taylor has people around him that will help him deal with the whole thing. Your mother is okay although frightened during the big one. The kids are able to sleep through the night even with aftershocks.
The biggest positive from my perspective is that there hasn't been another mass death count. (So far only a few injuries as far as I've seen.)
I'm glad you're and yours are safe and able to go somewhere with power/water.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-14 02:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-14 12:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-14 02:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-15 01:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-15 04:28 am (UTC)The thing with them is that they are over so fast really that the trauma doesn't really kick in til afterwards. So that means that in this case I wasn't so much traumatised as totally fed up with the idea of doing it again lol. You have the few seconds to wonder if it's going to get bigger as furniture crashes around you, but it doesn't last long.