Earthquake! (and we are fine)

Well, four of us (dad and the kids) experienced our first severe earthquake last night.  Meanwhile, Dara was still away at her “conference” in the South Pacific tropics–for some reason her flight home was “canceled” and she had to stay for an extra day of kidless hiking, snorkeling and swimming.

A 7.5 scale quake struck the South Island north of Christchurch at just after midnight.  It was a surreal experience–one that was scary and impressive in its magnitude and length.  I (Jeremy) awoke to a slow rumbling and the shaking of closet doors and window blinds.  It lasted for what felt like several minutes and gradually got stronger and stronger, causing the bed and whole house to sway.  After getting my bearings, I wobbled into Leah and Rose’s room and tried to figure out whether the quake was large enough and dangerous enough to merit waking them up.  At the same time, a startled Hazel came down the hallway just as the power went out and the nightlight went dark.  As the shaking subsided, I decided to let the sleepy heads sleep.  Meanwhile, Hazel and I, wired from the experience, went outside to check things out.

What followed was an impressive showing of community spirit.  We were greeted by our next door neighbors who were out making sure everyone was ok.  They offered us an extra flashlight (or “torch”) and assured us that, although it was a strong quake, it wasn’t big enough to cause damage to the house.  As we were chatting, the first aftershock hit and we could hear things in the house rattling.  We said goodnight and headed back in to check in on Leah and Rose, still slumbering away.  Hazel came into my bed and we kept remarking on how exciting and scary the whole event had been.  Neither of us could sleep, and we experienced another three or four aftershocks that just amped us up even more.

Just as we were getting back to sleep, a truck pulled up in our driveway and we saw another neighbor and staff member at the girls’ school coming to check in on us.  He wanted to make sure were we all ok and he told us that the police hadn’t issued any tsunami warnings or evacuation orders for Westport.

Of course, we had no idea what happens the morning after an earthquake, we we all got up and had a cold breakfast (no power) and got ready for school.  As we were pulling out of the driveway, we found out that school was closed, but Rose’s kindy was still open.  So, after dropping off Rose, I took Leah and Hazel, dressed in their school uniforms, to the beach to see what the sea was like, post-seismic activity (we live on the West Coast, where there was no tsunami risk).  In short, it wasn’t much different than usual, but we had fun making up games on the sand and hunting for the perfect drawing sticks.

It’s likely we will have a bunch of aftershocks days and even weeks following last nights event.  In fact, we felt another just now as I was writing this update.  The bottom line is that we all survived the quake and the subsequent power outage just fine, but we certainly aren’t looking forward to doing it again anytime soon.