Huge earthquake outside Chch. Any Kiwis on here from Chch?

Just went to read the Kiwi news, and was shocked to see that they had a huge earthquake near a major Kiwi city. Is anyone on HF from around this area? Chch was on my list of places to visit, and hopefully I will still be able to.

 

CCh is in a pretty sad state at the moment. It looks like it's going to be about a decade before it's totally rebuilt, and they've lost a lot of beautiful old architecture. About $4 billion to rebuild.

If you're going to be here soon, I'd probably recommend visiting some of the other places first.

Also, if you're going barefoot, NZ's, totally the place to be. Nobody wears shoes here, haha.

 

Yeah I'm in chch. It was pretty fucked up, quite a few buildings will need to be demolished. But ehh, coulda been so much worse. No one died directly from it. (A couple of people were seriously injured, one guy needed toes or a foot amputated or smoething. And a few elderly people had heart attacks but I guess because it wasnt a direct injury it "doesnt count" for a death toll.)

People being the wretched creatures that they are there was really bad looting afterwards. The cops/media downplayed it, but my girlfriends mum works for the police and some areas were looted severely. They got a call that a big department store was being looted, took them 15 mins to get a car there, when they arrived the store was empty, no people, no items, everything was gone. If it continued into the night (earthquake hit just after 4:30am) then they were going to declare martial law lol. But it calmed down once they had a presence around the city.

They put a curfew in place and the military did come in, but just to help out. theres still soldiers around but I think they lifted the blockades yesterday/today and aside from barricades around condemned buildings we're now free to go into the central business district.

A few rural areas are fucked. Lots of churches have crumbled. Cracks in roads and buildings and houses everywhere. Pretty much everyone that had an old brick chimney now has a gaping hole in their roof.

Uni got hit hard, apparently over a million books were knocked off shelves so they've closed it while they sort shit out. so I get an extra two weeks time to do my assignments arty:

 

Haha, score.

 

Kia Ora

Did any of the Kiwis who have responded wake up when the quake hit? As I understand, it struck in the morning around 5 your time.

Cheers!

 

I was awake just before it happened. Was getting acid reflux and trying to decide if I could be bothered getting up to take an antacid or if I could just tolerate it and go back to sleep. Then everything just started shaking and falling everywhere.

One of my friends slept through it, but he said he passed out because he drank too much. Bet he got a surprise when he finally did wake.