White Room
Yesterday morning at around 4.35am I woke up and heard a shuddering sound.
I was half asleep and tried to turn on a light behind me, but it went out immediately.
I then realised that I also heard my family (all of whom sleep upstairs, whereas I'm downstairs) yelling, then the noise got louder, and I heard glasses smashing.
At this point, I was still half asleep, but realised something wasn't quite right, so I got out of bed, and then found that the floor was moving all around me and my little dog promptly ran into my legs in the confusion. I picked her up, and yelled out to my parents, but they were already outside, and eventually, it finally hit me;
Earthquake.
About two seconds before the magnitude 7.1 earthquake (which lasted around forty seconds) ended, I finally remembered to stand in my doorway.
Eventually someone answered me I think, because then I was running through the lounge, up the stairs and out beside the pool.
Actually, I know I beat some of my family members to get outside, but I don't know who, perhaps it was just me and one sibling outside at the time?
When I got out side and sat on the tiles next to the pool, the pool had turned into rather a choppy sea, and the pool water was splashing from side to side so much that walls a metre away had water covering them almost as high as a metre.
I eventually realised that one of my closest friends was home alone, so rang him, and he didn't really know what to do so raced over.
All the neighbours in the surrounding area started calling out to us, telling us not to go inside yet.
After a few hours, I was brave enough to go back in for my cellphone, but with all the power out it was a bit of a mission.
It was then that I realised why my foot was hurting when I saw that the lounge was covered in broken ceramics.
The after shocks were still quite big and scary for sometime, so we waited outside for ages.
At about 7am, some of our neighbours called out and told us to store up water as soon as we could, and the other neighbours water had already shut off.
It took until about 8am before my little brother would actually go back in the house, and my little sister just stayed with me outside.
Looking out the window was really bizarre when it was still dark- torches everywhere, no lights, about ten cars out on the streets, but all driving at about 20km an hour.
Then when it started to get light, you could see that in all the streets there were just people congregating in the middle of the road.
When the sun was up, all our neighbours stood in the middle of the road, and a few of the men on the street got to work taking all the chimneys down (nearly every chimney on my street needed removing), and one house had the chimney go right through the roof.
One neighbour offered to make us all tea.
My friend and I walked down to the main street in our earthquake clothes at about 7.45am, and the dairy was open, but with no power, and there were heaps of people grabbing everything they could, one of the owners said that they were already running out of supplies.
A few of the old building on the main street have been evacuated for fear of them falling down.
I was in shock for a very lo- just had a massive aftershock just now and just about ran outside, haha.
I was in shock for a very long time, and felt physically ill the whole day. My mum described it as having a really bad hangover, haha.
It was actually kinda cool to see the community spirit in Lyttelton yesterday though. Everyone checking on their neighbours, helping each other, talking in the streets.
I went for a walk up into the hills with Fraser, and saw that Castle Rock had lost a huge boulder, perhaps the size of room, and it had left a huge trail in its path as it had rolled down the hill.
That made me sort of sad.
I'd always liked Castle Rock, now it looks completely different.
I felt safer up higher in the hills actually.
I'd finally started to settle down, when at about 5pm last night we had another big aftershock - at that time there had apparently been 21 aftershocks of a magnitude of more than 4 in the 12 hours following the earthquake.
Then at work, there were suddenly a whole lot more for the next two hours- my boss gently told me to step out from underneath the chandelier.
Dad just handed me the newspaper - DOOMSDAY in huge letters. Oh, how comforting.
When I walked to Fraser's after work, the silence was worse.
No one was out, there was a curfew imposed in the city centre from 7pm till 7am, but even in Lyttelton at 8.30 it was eerily quiet. The only shop I saw open apart from work was Video Ezy, and I only saw two other people walking home, and two policemen stationed at the end of the main street to prevent people from entering.
Finally, last night, after being awake for 21 hours, I went to bed, then I kept getting woken and couldn't sleep in because of the aftershocks.
There was one aftershock that was so big and long last night that I got ready to run.
Can someone tell me how on earth I'm meant to study for my exams in a few days when all I want to do is curl up in a ball in the corner of the shower?
I was half asleep and tried to turn on a light behind me, but it went out immediately.
I then realised that I also heard my family (all of whom sleep upstairs, whereas I'm downstairs) yelling, then the noise got louder, and I heard glasses smashing.
At this point, I was still half asleep, but realised something wasn't quite right, so I got out of bed, and then found that the floor was moving all around me and my little dog promptly ran into my legs in the confusion. I picked her up, and yelled out to my parents, but they were already outside, and eventually, it finally hit me;
Earthquake.
About two seconds before the magnitude 7.1 earthquake (which lasted around forty seconds) ended, I finally remembered to stand in my doorway.
Eventually someone answered me I think, because then I was running through the lounge, up the stairs and out beside the pool.
Actually, I know I beat some of my family members to get outside, but I don't know who, perhaps it was just me and one sibling outside at the time?
When I got out side and sat on the tiles next to the pool, the pool had turned into rather a choppy sea, and the pool water was splashing from side to side so much that walls a metre away had water covering them almost as high as a metre.
I eventually realised that one of my closest friends was home alone, so rang him, and he didn't really know what to do so raced over.
All the neighbours in the surrounding area started calling out to us, telling us not to go inside yet.
After a few hours, I was brave enough to go back in for my cellphone, but with all the power out it was a bit of a mission.
It was then that I realised why my foot was hurting when I saw that the lounge was covered in broken ceramics.
The after shocks were still quite big and scary for sometime, so we waited outside for ages.
At about 7am, some of our neighbours called out and told us to store up water as soon as we could, and the other neighbours water had already shut off.
It took until about 8am before my little brother would actually go back in the house, and my little sister just stayed with me outside.
Looking out the window was really bizarre when it was still dark- torches everywhere, no lights, about ten cars out on the streets, but all driving at about 20km an hour.
Then when it started to get light, you could see that in all the streets there were just people congregating in the middle of the road.
When the sun was up, all our neighbours stood in the middle of the road, and a few of the men on the street got to work taking all the chimneys down (nearly every chimney on my street needed removing), and one house had the chimney go right through the roof.
One neighbour offered to make us all tea.
My friend and I walked down to the main street in our earthquake clothes at about 7.45am, and the dairy was open, but with no power, and there were heaps of people grabbing everything they could, one of the owners said that they were already running out of supplies.
A few of the old building on the main street have been evacuated for fear of them falling down.
I was in shock for a very lo- just had a massive aftershock just now and just about ran outside, haha.
I was in shock for a very long time, and felt physically ill the whole day. My mum described it as having a really bad hangover, haha.
It was actually kinda cool to see the community spirit in Lyttelton yesterday though. Everyone checking on their neighbours, helping each other, talking in the streets.
I went for a walk up into the hills with Fraser, and saw that Castle Rock had lost a huge boulder, perhaps the size of room, and it had left a huge trail in its path as it had rolled down the hill.
That made me sort of sad.
I'd always liked Castle Rock, now it looks completely different.
I felt safer up higher in the hills actually.
I'd finally started to settle down, when at about 5pm last night we had another big aftershock - at that time there had apparently been 21 aftershocks of a magnitude of more than 4 in the 12 hours following the earthquake.
Then at work, there were suddenly a whole lot more for the next two hours- my boss gently told me to step out from underneath the chandelier.
Dad just handed me the newspaper - DOOMSDAY in huge letters. Oh, how comforting.
When I walked to Fraser's after work, the silence was worse.
No one was out, there was a curfew imposed in the city centre from 7pm till 7am, but even in Lyttelton at 8.30 it was eerily quiet. The only shop I saw open apart from work was Video Ezy, and I only saw two other people walking home, and two policemen stationed at the end of the main street to prevent people from entering.
Finally, last night, after being awake for 21 hours, I went to bed, then I kept getting woken and couldn't sleep in because of the aftershocks.
There was one aftershock that was so big and long last night that I got ready to run.
Can someone tell me how on earth I'm meant to study for my exams in a few days when all I want to do is curl up in a ball in the corner of the shower?
Comments
And don't fret, either.
What you can fret about is the discovery of an "alternative universe" blog that contains someone's creative writing that she neglected to tell anyone about.