H: Since we have been here, there have been getting up to 1,000 aftershocks. It sounds like a lot eh? For those that have been here since September, they are now closing in on 8,000. It’s something I never knew happened after earthquakes, you never hear it on the news.

To start with, the small ones were a novelty – we were getting a lot of 3s and low 4s so not too big – and it was almost fun to feel everything wobble. We then had a few 5s – there have been 7 since we got here. We barely felt the first one because we were driving – apparently that’s the best way to miss them. The second we missed because we were away for the weekend – infact we were in Wanaka on a ‘Quake Break’ – lots of places have been offering Chch residents discounted stays to give them a break from the shakes.

So the first 5 we felt was a 5.3. It was in the middle of the night and it will have woken most of the city up. I think they probably feel worse in the middle of the night – you wake to an intense shake and can hear things falling down in the house but you’re still half asleep. We had a few frames topple over, but only one break so not too bad.

The second 5 was nearly a month later when we were both working at home. This time it was a 5.5 and man the house shook. We had more frames go over and a couple now have dints in them but still nothing too bad. But it was a big shake and our hearts had definitely got going.

Up to now, neither of us had got under our desks. A few of the bigger 4’s and this last 5 we did consider it, but by the time we had thought about it the worst had stopped.

Then we got to the 13th June. At 1 o’clock I was downstairs about to make us some lunch when the 5.7 hit. I don’t believe I even gave it a second’s thought – you could tell it was huge - I dived under the kitchen table.

The noise is by far the most frightening part of these aftershocks. You can hear the earth roar before the shake comes and the house makes the most awful sound – like gale force wind rattling windows but a hundred times worse. Add to that the noise of everything falling down it is pretty scary. I could hardly make myself heard as I yelled to G to see if he was alright upstairs.

It didn’t last long but my heart was beating way too fast for a while afterwards. The usual frames came down but this time the speakers went over, books fell in the bookcase, drawers in our office and bedroom flew open, my monitor collapsed forward, toiletries in the cupboard and bathroom fell down, bottles of sauces in our cupboard clattered forward and beer bottles in the fridge fell over.

After surveying the damage, standing everything back up, clearing up the glass from frame, ringing friends to check they were OK and taking deep breaths, we had our lunch. We were expecting a lot of smaller shakes after that – you always get a very active few days after a big one. What we weren’t expecting was an even bigger one.

The 6.3 hit 80 minutes later while we were both still downstairs clearing up. Again there was no doubt this one was big, and 6.3 is infact the same magnitude as the deadly earthquake in February. To show how fast we ran, G who had been running the tap didn’t even stop to turn it off. The 5.7 was big but this was huge. The same terrifying noise and seeing things fall down around you is not good. Nor was seeing the shelves next to you sway so much you wonder how on earth they didn’t come down.

We spent the next half hour under the table. During that half hour we had a 4.9, 3.4 and a 4.1. It did take us a while to get settled enough to go back to work but it wasn’t a very productive afternoon. We had 67 quakes in total that day.

We didn’t bother putting the pictures back up until yesterday – Friday. When we had three 4’s and half of them came down again. In some respects maybe we’re a bit stupid to keep putting them back up but if not we’re living with a permanent cloud over us. The frames aren’t expensive so maybe we’re better to have them up and let them break than have a house where everything is on the floor!

It’s weird why we dived under the table because if I think about it I am not really worried for my safety. There’s not much that could fall on us that would hurt us (we have taken the frame down from above our bed). I guess it’s just instinct?

Here is some video of the quake from a store in the East of Chch (where unfortunately the ground is even more shakey).

We are lucky in our area – there are a few cracks in the plaster in our house but you really can’t tell anything has happened from the street. But just one street away there are piles of liquefaction ready to be collected by the hugely overworked council. But even there they are lucky.

The Eastern suburbs are in ruins again. After three months of clearing up and trying to get back to normal they are back to square one. There is liquefaction, flooding, sink holes, some homes still don’t have power, and many now don’t have running water or sewerage again. We were out that way today and the roads look like they’ve been bombed. They believe 20,000 people left Christchurch on Tuesday.

And it’s not surprising. I was in work on Tuesday and the office manager was noticeably upset and a couple of the mechanics didn’t look so great. The aftershocks since Feb have got to everyone but having one the same size as Feb I think is the last straw for a lot of people, who had hoped that they would get ever smaller over time. Everyone’s sleep is also being disturbed – shakes have woken us up at least once a night for the last few nights.

Shops and businesses were closed for the rest of Monday and some were still shut Tuesday where clean up was needed or if more damage was caused. Monday’s 6.3 was big but apparently the one in Feb felt even worse. For some of the Eastern suburbs it may have sealed their fate. We are days away from a government announcement as to which suburbs are going to be abandoned.

Fortunately, the red zone is still cordoned off – and for exactly this reason. Following Monday, 100 more buildings will have to be demolished – putting the figure at around 600 of the buildings in the CBD, a huge number in what is a relatively small city. There were a few engineers who were working in the red zone who were injured on Monday but no-one seriously. Fortunately they evacuated after the 5.7 and so most workers were out for the big one. They still hope to get these buildings pulled down so the city centre can reopen in September but we will see.

So not a great week for Christchurch, and it will take another few months for the clean up to be finished again. They are waiting on engineers to decide which suburbs won’t be rebuilt on so there are a lot of people living in limbo again.

On the positive side though – it sounded like nearly everyone who was phoning the workshop on Tuesday were asking Lydia how everyone was. Our landlord texted to check we were ok (and to see how the house had faired) and there is still a sense of everyone helping each other again. BP and other big fuel stations are freezing the price of fuel for Chch and one of the power companies is offering cheaper electricity for Chch residents. The student army are doing exams but then they will be out shoveling liquefaction and I heard the Farmy Army (yes – farmers with tractors!) will be back too.

H: For the first time in 6 years most of our belongings have seen daylight! We have found a house to rent, bought a car and spent too many weekends scouring the scales for furniture and buying depressing things like vacuum cleaners and pegs. Oh what a change from a tent and a backpack!

We have bought bikes (if you can call mine that - it has brakes, two wheels but they are almost as thick as car wheels and the gears are non-existent) and have been out a lot of weekends on the biking tracks. We have navigated the potholes and the closed roads to get to Sumner and Godley Head and have even made it to Wanaka for a weekend.

We’ve had an incredibly mild May – we’ve been eating lunch outside in the hot sun, which isn’t bad for the equivalent of Nov! Now though it’s getting cold – and man does it get cold, mainly because there’s no heating. We have a heat pump downstairs in the kitchen but that’s it. We’re relying on oil heaters upstairs which really aren’t cheap to run. It’s also too cold now to wear flip flops so it’s time to go back to the UK for summer…

H: If you hadn't seen the news of the earthquake, then you could be forgiven in thinking that some of the Christchurch suburbs were just very run down. The roads are all bumpy, the pavements have mud over them and every couple of hundred metres or so there's a house looking derelict.


You don't need to look too closely, however, to see that in fact the roads have odd sections that have sunk or raised a metre. That the places where the kerb stones that have broken look like someone has tried to push them together. That the derelict houses actually have a wall missing, or a roof collapsed. And there are portaloos dotted down every street. It becomes obvious that this is something more than just being run down.


The city centre is something else. Much of it is still cordoned off, and will be for months - they don't expect the CBD to be open until October at the earliest. There's a big Avenue just south of the centre that is lined with huge retail stores, all of which are closed with 'do not enter' signs outside them.

There is a big hotel (well, big for Chch standards) in the city centre that has been in the news a lot at home. It is 27 storeys and one corner of it has sunk, meaning the hotel is now leaning over by a metre. It is incredible to see – it is noticeably slumped to one side and doesn’t look like it should still be standing. Apparently they have pumped concrete into the bottom few floors in an attempt to stabilise it. The two blocks around the hotel are no-go areas incase it collapses.

We also walked by our old apartment building today which is all cordoned off. There are windows and doors still open so I am guessing that people haven’t been allowed back in. We spoke to a guy working there who said they are trying to stabilise the basement in the hope that they won’t have to pull them down. There must be at least 100 apartments in those three buildings alone.


There are some areas that are a lot worse than others. The roads just around the AMI stadium are crazy, it looks like they've been stretched out like elastic and let go. There is a bridge where one lane is now a metre below the other and the roads just at the bottom of the hills have cracks running down them.

There is also a lot of damage that can't be seen. One of the big sky scrapers looks fine from the outside (or at least from as close as you can get to it), but it is still going to be demolished as the damage inside is too great.

In fact they have a list of 140 buildings in the CBD that will have to come down, which is a huge number for a relatively small city. There are talks at the moment of imploding the big hotel as pulling it down floor by floor would take too long. However there is a great risk that the explosion could cause a mini earthquake which could destroy more businesses close by.


Sumner, the coastal suburb where we had intended to live, had also been very badly damaged. The road is slowly being mended but a 15 min journey is still talking an hour or so. Many of the cliffs became unstable and a house-sized rock has fallen from the cliffs and gone through the roof of the house below.


For most people in the suburbs, the quake on the 22nd Feb would have just felt like a very strong aftershock and they would probably not have expected the damage that occurred. The wife of a colleague of Greg's was at home when it happened, knew that it was strong but wouldn't have imagined what had happened in the city.

Tash however was in a mall just south of Cathedral Square shoe shopping with her 2 1/2 year old son. As the quake happened she crouched over her son and as soon as it was over they were told to evacuate. The floors in the mall had all cracked, shop fronts had broken and some people were injured. When they got outside she realised that she had left her car keys on the floor where they were trying on the shoes. By now the liquifaction had started and was covering the car park. Can't imagine what it must have been like for her.

Caleb now talks about shakes and bumpy roads, but hopefully other than that there'll be no lasting effects. There is a place under their table at home that he goes to if there are aftershocks.


Until a few days ago the water wasn't safe to drink or use for washing up so we have been having to boil it twice. Which definitely makes you realise how much water you're using! We are lucky though, it’s only a few streets away where we have seen people emptying their chemical toilets into big drums on the streets.


It is strange being here now in a city that has been through such a big thing together that we were lucky enough to miss. All that we see are the broken roads, destroyed houses, portaloos lining the streets and a cordon around the town centre. We have felt a few aftershocks, a magnitude 4 which woke us up in the night, but really not many. We were driving today when the 5.3 happened. Greg said he felt he didn't have full control of the car for a second and I didn't notice anything. It wasn't until the radio presenter said 'wow that was a big one' that G pieced it together. I was still oblivious wondering what they were talking about. Tash, Joris and Caleb had been under the table...

However, there is also a great feeling of togetherness and everyone seems to be working together and helping each other. So as horrible as the devastation is to see, it is also a very positive time to be here.

The added bonus for us is that all the stores that are able to open are having huge sales. Some have set up temporary stores in warehouses on the outskirts of the city and are trying to clear their stock out. Which means we have hardly paid full price for any furniture we've bought for our new home!