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Christchurch was hit by a 7.2 earthquake this morning with huge damage especially to the older parts of the city.

All the usual utilities are out of course and contact by cell phone is difficult as well at times. Thankfully my family in and around the city are ok, although all have huge messes to clean up.

Sadly as I don't have many cell phone numbers I cannot contact my many friends - I lived there for 70 years. I guess a lot of my time over the next few days will be spent in sending off snail mail if phone contact can't be established.

I know we do have one member in Christchurch
Godzoned, so hope she is ok. She is living in an older part of the city within walking distance of the CBD.

Squirrel

Oh wow! I do hope everyones ok

I'm in Christchurch and it was pretty scary!

The main quake was at about 4.30am and lasted about a minute! The power went off with the quake though it came back about an hour ago (midday). Cell phone coverage was down and it was so hard to know what was going on.

We've been having after shocks ever since the main quake, but now they've dropped off to be quite gentle and about once every hour.

There is quite extensive damage in the CBD, with a large portion of it a NO-GO area. Thankfully there have been no deaths.

Other parts of the city have had some bad damage, mainly new brighton, and avonside, and kaiapoi anywhere near a river or on sandy ground.

Roads, water and sewerage mains and brick buildings have been the main casualties

We are pretty lucky because we escpaed most of the damage, but we have a burst pipe in the roof, and we're still waiting for the plumber to show up, I expect it will be a long wait. We also had our back gate ripped off its hinges and the arch and wall it's attached to looks like it's shifted a bit, so that gate might not fit anymore.

This article has a fair bit of info and pics too.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4094986 ... Canterbury

Thanks for the post murmured - what part of the city are you living in?

I lived in St Albans as a child once married moved to Aranui and the last 20 yrs was in Halswell before moving to Melbourne 4+ yrs ago.

It is of course a long overdue quake of any size - or so we learnt when doing civil defence training when on school committees.

Glad you are ok and hope the plumber gets there soon.

Squirrel

PS Thanks for the link to stuff.co nz. Will try their site later - its not coming up at te moment

Squirrel wrote:what part of the city are you living in?

I'm in Ilam/ Burnside. Just walking round the area there seems to be very little damage where we are, apart from the power being out, and fences/gates being cracked and damaged.

The plumber just came and went, he was here for about 15 mins, and left a bill for $270! Thank god we rent so it's the land-lords responsibility.

Wow that is a pretty good size quake. Glad you are ok murmered.

How very scary--hope all are doing okay, and so glad you've managed to get the plumber to fix your pipe Murmured

Glad to hear you two are OK , hope you get intouch soon with your friends and family.

Glad to hear my fellow kiwis who were affected are safe. Saw the news and been reading the NZ Herald & Stuff. Some of the photos are just scary.

Glad all are well, earthquakes are scary.

Becca001

Oh, that sounds really scary. I hope all our friends there are all right.

Pleased to hear that you two are fine, hope everything settles down again now and there is no more damage

I thought about all our NZ friends on here, as soon as I saw the news this morning!! I'm so glad that although there is a lot of structural damage there have been very few serious injuries.

I hope all our NZ members are ok and that their properties are still in one piece.

It's very scary seeing this sort of devastation in your own country. I woke up to find out about it via the stuff website and was immediately making sure all my friends down in Christchurch are okay. Thankfully they're all good, no real damage apart from lack of power/water and some things thrown around in the house.

Hopefully the strong winds etc. that are heading to Chch don't cause too much further damage. After a plane crash killing 9, and this huge earthquake...that area needs a bit of a respite!

Wow scary stuff glad your all ok & no serious damage to you all xxx

*big hugs* I'm so glad you're safe and that there's been no fatalities. I've just woken up and seen this post. I hope your home gets fixed soon.

Glad everything is okay with you Murmured - that must have been very frightening to be woken up by an earthquake. I hope the winds expected tomorrow will not cause more damage

I'm glad to see everyone is okay so far. Thoughts and prayers for everyone there.

Wow, I am so glad to hear that everyone is OK! good luck getting in contact with all your family and friends!!

That's really scary...it's comforting to know that you're all okay.