What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? I’m not really sure, but I would imagine that the meeting would be similar to my Saturday morning in Christchurch. At about 4:30 in the morning I was thrown from my bed by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake. To put that into perspective, the earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12, 2010 was slightly smaller. The Haitian earthquake affected the lives of three million people, and took the lives of an estimated 230,000. The Christchurch earthquake, known as the Canterbury Quake in the media, seriously injured only two people. One man suffered a heart attack during the chaos, but his death can’t be directly linked to the earthquake. The Canterbury Quake did, however, affect hundreds of thousands of lives that day, ruining businesses, destroying homes, and more. Out of those hundreds of thousands lives affected by the quake, I give you the story of one.
When I fell asleep on the night of September 3rd, my only concern for the following day was catching the shuttle to the train station. Adrenaline had been continuously surging through my veins for the past week, and all I was looking forward to was some peace, quiet, and a good night’s sleep in my bed back in Wellington. Fate, as usual, was not on my side.
The first thing I remember about the quake was the sound of church bells. I didn’t hear just one, or even a couple, but every single bell in the city. All of the bells clanged in chaotic cacophony of ringing metal, waking every soul for miles around. I had just opened my eyes when I felt the first tremors. And what tremors they were. I watched as a painting on the wall of my hotel room jumped from the wall with a spectacular crash. Over the din from outside, I heard the water in the bathroom’s toilet bowl sloshing around. I could even feel my own teeth rattling around in my jaws. A freight train may as well have been running through my room. My bed shook like one of those Magic Fingers massage beds, but cranked up to eleven. I smacked against the carpet with a muffled thump.
“You have got to be kidding me!” I groaned.
I have a knack for attracting disasters. The destruction of Hurricane Ike marked my first semester of college at Rice University. I grew up in the heart of Tornado Alley, so I’ve seen more than my fair share of cyclones. I was even born during the greatest blizzard to hit my hometown in over a century. As you can see, I’m no stranger to natural disasters.
Maybe it was past experience, maybe my adrenaline had all been spent, or maybe I was just too damn tired to care, but whatever it was that guided my actions, I didn’t panic. Instead I moved to the window with a sort of bemused detachment to look out over Cathedral Square from my fifth floor room window. Hundreds of people filled the square below wrapped in hotel provided blankets and quilts. They milled about the square either searching for their companions or to fight off the cold. I felt myself cock my head to one side. Why should I join them? Tiny as they appeared from high vantage point, I could still see that they looked cold and miserable. Even though the earthquake had cut the city’s power supply, including the power to my hotel, I at least had a bed and some privacy. So with the floor still swaying beneath my feet, I rubbed my eyes and stumbled to my bed to sleep until my alarm clock sounded. Ah hour and a half later, it did.
I rose from my bed and made my way to the window. The crowd outside had doubled. I wondered if this was what the Pope felt like before he gave mass. Probably not. I sighed and decided that if I were to join the throng outside then I would at least be showered. So grabbing my trusty flashlight from my backpack (Dora the Explorer would have been so proud), I went to test the hotel’s water supply. I was in luck. Aside from the small flicker of light from my flashlight, I showered in complete darkness. It was not an experience I would like to repeat. The dim lighting made me feel as if I were in some bizarre version of a slasher film. Still, I wasn’t to be dissuaded. Freshly scrubbed and with my bags packed, I dragged my luggage down five flights of stairs and into a candle-lit lobby.
Those hours in the lobby I count as some of the longest in my life. News trickled in at a painfully slow pace. The airport was closed. Schools were closed. All trains were cancelled. Christchurch was closed. There was no way I was leaving the city that day. But worse than my travel plans being cancelled, worse by far, was not being able to contact my family. I can’t even begin to describe how badly I wanted to tell them that I was safe. Bored out of my mind, but safe. I tried to solve both problems by calling home on my cellphone. I may as well have tried using a graphing calculator. I gave up.
Luckily my mother is a stubborn woman. Out of all the cell phone traffic no doubt clogging the city of Christchurch, my mother managed to get a call through to me. I don’t believe in the slightest that this was luck or anything like that, not at all. Instead, I like to think that her call was as persistent as she is. After assuring her and the rest of my family that I was unharmed by the quake, I felt considerably better. I resigned myself to people watching.
From what I could tell, there were few families. Those that were in the hotel lobby tended to cling to each other and look the most worried. The most populous group of the Camelot Hotel was the couples. Like the families, they tended to cling to each other. They did talk, however, but mainly to each other, and only about how they were going to flee the city. The final group, my group, was the people travelling Han style: solo. We seemed to be the least worried. In fact, most of us were pretty relaxed. Between reading my latest Bill Bryson book and eating the cornflakes provided by the hotel staff, I made friends with an amicable, elderly software developer from Darwin, Australia. He and four of his friends had been attending a meeting in the city, and he had decided to stay an extra day. I had found a brother in terms of luck.
When he asked me about what brought me to Christchurch, I told him that I was a student and, among other things, a writer (I am probably being a little too generous with the term).
“Is that so, my boy?” he asked with a grin, “Well then you should be pleased as punch, shouldn’t you?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Like you said, mate,” he replied, “You’re a writer. Don’t you lot thrive on chaos?”
I smiled. He was right. In every disaster, there is a story waiting to be told. I was inspired. The city was ripe for exploring, waiting for me to chronicle the tragedy that had befallen it. My new friend wished me luck and asked me to bring back some pictures. If my life were to be made into a movie, I hope his part goes to Michael Caine.
Dawn was only just settling upon the city when I strode out onto its streets. I hadn’t shaved in almost two weeks and was wearing wrinkled clothes, yet I was still one of the least disheveled wanderers in Christchurch. From the looks on the faces of the people around me, I thought I had stepped into a zombie movie. And like any scholar of zombie movies, I knew what I had to do. First, assess the destruction. Second, find fellow survivors. Third, find food and other resources. Finally, kick some ass.
My camera came in handy for step one. I kept in mind my old Aussie friend’s request as I walked down the streets looking for destruction. Turns out, it wasn’t all that hard to find. Every corner I turned revealed some rubble or broken glass. I saw a Mexican restaurant with its entire front wall missing, like some sort of diorama. I passed a glassworks store, its entire inventory decimated. Worst of all, I saw a liquor store filled with broken bottles, precious spirits saturating the linoleum. An old couple looked inside shaking their heads and ready to weep. I wanted to as well. After that, I had seen enough. On to step two.
Since breakfast I had been communicating with my Wellington friends who also happened to be in Christchurch that fateful night. I was eager to hear if they had found a way out of the city because finding fellow survivors with similar objectives to one's own is a crucial step in living to to see the final credits roll in a zombie movie. None had. A few had been stranded at the airport without lodgings, so being the gentleman that I am, I offered them my hotel room. I figured pooling our resources (read: getting some money to help pay for a second night in the hotel) couldn’t hurt. They passed out within seconds of arriving at my hotel. I decided to let them sleep while I moved onto foraging.
I tried my best to recall any store or restaurant that looked as if it might have been open from my earlier wanderings. At least three survivors die in your typical zombie movie from trying to forage for food too late in the game. The key is to get your food early, while the zombie infection is still contained. The other commodity I needed was money. The main character usually finds himself in a situation where he needs to bribe some checkpoint guard to get his family or himself across the quarantine zone line. I felt I should be prepared for this eventuality. Apparently half the population had the same idea. Not until I slipped through a fair number of alleys and crossed a few bridges did I find a working ATM. The feel of a full wallet in my coat pocket was comforting. I would soon come to miss that feeling.
My errands complete, I decided to wake my friends and forage for food. Through all the numerous city blocks I explored, I found only one available food source: a small convenience store, apparently one with its own generator. The shop was jam-packed with fellow refugees. I found myself moving shoulder-to-shoulder through scared, confused customers in order to get my food. The cheap sandwiches I made back in my hotel rank among the best I have ever had.
But all was not well (aside from the obvious). As soon as I had finished my sandwiches, my companions and I were evacuated from my hotel (not before giving some photographs to a certain Australian). The hostel next door (thankfully I didn’t stay there) was at serious risk of collapsing, so all nearby buildings were emptied out into the streets. I was homeless. At least my appearance now matched my status. At least the receptionist was kind enough to book my group a reservation at a motel further down the road. We walked down the rubble-strewn roads with bags in tow to our new lodgings. Police officers questioned our story as we crossed through lockdown barriers until finally we found the Avenue Motor Lodge. It was there that I realized with horror that I no longer had my wallet. Throughout the entire ordeal of the earthquake, this was the first time that I panicked. I spent the rest of the night calling every location that I had visited in the past six hours with no success. I’ve never slept so poorly.
I awoke early the next morning to catch a bus out of the city. With a little luck, a lot of pleading, and some of my old acting skill, I managed to convince a travel agent to switch my reservations to the following day. I counted myself as one of the lucky few who managed to get out of Christchurch in a timely manner. I was happy, but the loss of my wallet still weighed heavily upon me. I slept nearly the entire bus ride to Picton and for the entirety of the ferry ride to Wellington. I was too drained to care about the scenery. My fatigue must have shown on my face when I arrived home to my flat, because my flatmates looked as if they had seen a ghost. I mean, I knew I looked like hell, but seriously? I guess I had been through hell, though. As I sat back in my desk chair, I wondered to myself: How was I to write about it? I had felt the full wrath of nature. I had seen a city in full lockdown. For a brief day, I had been a refugee. The problem was where to start. I decided to begin with a question. What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?
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