You could hear the screams all around as people panicked and struggled, writes KEITH LYNCHin Christchurch
CHRISTCHURCH thought the worst was over. After enduring a spate of major aftershocks over Christmas, most people in New Zealand’s second largest city were eager to get back to normality.
Local authorities were keen to get the locals back into town, even offering free parking in a bid to revitalise a city centre badly damaged by the 7.1 magnitude quake in September last year.
That quake was bad, but this one was so much worse.
New Zealand woke up to the news that its second largest city has been partially destroyed. Hundreds are likely to have died, crushed by bricks and stone, while thousands of others have seen their homes and places of work ruined.
About 1pm local time, I was walking down Gloucester Street, a relatively busy road running through Christchurch city centre.
Earthquakes are something the locals here have grown used to.
Since September last year there have been thousands of aftershocks, some very violent.
Yesterday’s quake though was different. The violence was so much more pronounced and intense. Immediately you could hear the screams all around you as people panicked and struggled to stay on their feet.
Bricks fell from buildings and smoke plumed through the city centre. I ran to the middle of the street where I thought I’d be safe from falling debris.
Just around the corner in Cathedral Square, two of the city’s most famous buildings, the ChristChurch Cathedral and The Press building, home of the local newspaper where hundreds of my colleagues work, were decimated.
The Anglican cathedral, which survived all the other shakes, lost its spire, which plunged into the square. A major aftershock only minutes after the first jolt saw more of The Press building collapse, its spire too ruined.
Immediately, we knew a lot of people had died. A colleague told staff he saw people crushed by falling rubble on a busy pedestrian thoroughfare nearby.
Another co-worker’s head was badly cut as rocks slammed down from above. A woman and a man, covered in dust, sat on the ground and were treated for gashes to their heads. They were lucky.
Visible on the lower floors of a city centre scraper were two people smashing a window, presumably to get some air.
Parts of the suburbs were also badly hit. Dark, fine, grey silt rushed from underground, carpeting some streets with sludge.
Throughout the city water pipes and mains burst, showering other roads in water and leaving the population unsure about the water supply. Two cars plunged down two sinkholes in one street in the eastern suburbs of the city.
A man in the seaside suburb of New Brighton told me how his son pulled five people from a ruined pub. Both he and his partner had been forced out of their home as the pub was likely to collapse on it overnight. They found somewhere to stay with a neighbour.
Hundreds of others had nowhere to stay. They were forced to set up camp in a large park near the Christchurch Hospital.
On Tuesday evening, heavy rain began to fall, further hindering an already nightmarish rescue operation.
Aftershocks continued through the night, mild ones causing nothing but a little rocking. Others were more pronounced jolts.
Local people pride themselves on their resilience, but after enduring hundreds of aftershocks since September and now finding themselves worse off than ever before, you wonder what next for this city? It has never been worse for Christchurch.