Actually I forgot to mention how I got my car back on the day of the earthquake, I had left it on the other side of a bridge and walked over the bridge to walk to the house. In the evening Ina dropped me off at the bridge again where I crossed again to my car. Apparently there was a bridge further down the road that was still intact (the one on Pages Road, leading to New Brighton). So I decided to try and reach it. This was easier said than done. There were many people on the roads, almost like morning traffic in Belgium on the way to Brussels, just painstakingly slow, but there was a reason for this. There were parts of the road that had transformed into a big mud pool. There were cars that already got stuck and everybody was taking turns to cross this muddy section. There were two tracks in the mud and they were deep enough so that your car would sink away and make the bottom of your car scrape the muddy ground in between the tracks. This is actually what happened to a nice old Corvette that had to go through this mud patch two cars in front of me. It was a nice antique corvette and was pretty low to the ground. Too low to risk getting through if you ask me. But he went in full throttle and managed to make it. So it seemed. Now it was my turn. Adrenalin started to rush, one single sentence in my head, scrolling like a LED banner… don’t get stuck… don’t get stuck … It’s a lot of pressure, especially when you know there are more than 100 cars waiting in line to cross that section. I floored it as well, 1st gear, quickly on to second gear and just fly through. I had enough speed to pull through, I slowed down quite a bit but the wheels had enough traction to get me out of there. I never looked behind to see how others were doing :-). A bit further I saw the Corvette, it was struggling with its transmission. It must have gotten damaged during his full throttle maneuver. I passed him but was not yet near the bridge. First there was more water to cross. I guess this helped to clean the car from the mud patch. At first it was not too deep actually, so that was alright.
But once I crossed the bridge into New Brighton it became really deep. There was a motorcycle that tried to go through, a chopper. His engine almost submerged. He had to stop and push his bike after it had given up. You can’t turn a bike into a jetski unfortunately. But yeah, it was not a piece of cake with a car either, I am sure my exhaust was submerged, but that doesn’t really matter, as long as the engine can suck in air instead of water it can still do it’s thing. I made it across here as well and it was smooth sailing to the house.
The day after the quake. Miriam was scheduled to work. Since she is a nurse she is one of the few that actually work in situations like these. Instead of blindly going there we tried giving the hospital a call to see if she was required. My phone was the only one with some power left but I seemed to have lost signal during the night. We took the car out for a spin to see if we could get a signal somewhere else. When we were about to give up we managed to make the call and she was advised to stay put. They would call her (or me since I had a working phone) if the situation changed during the day.
Ina, my landlady, and Andrea just hung around the house, trying to make the best out of the situation. We had a fire going in a small portable BBQ and were able to boil some water and have a cup of tea. Some neighbors joined in on the fun and stories were exchanged.
After a while I recieved a txt from Miriam that said to go to her mum’s house. She had electricity and her grandparents had running water. Andrea and I were thinking of going but first we did some work at the house. We placed a big wooden board in front of one of the broken windows and fortified the archway that separated the kitchen from the living room by placing a large wooden beam in between and jacking it up with a car jack. One of the neighbors who is a builder came later that afternoon to take a look at this archway. It wasn’t well constructed before the quake and now it had only gotten worse. Not a place you wanted to stand when another shock trembled the ground.
There was still no running water or electricity but we managed to connect a phone to the landline and were able to make calls which was very handy since cell phone traffic was unreliable. Txt message arrived with huge delays, calls usually didn’t reach the other end. I called home and reassured that everything was alright.
After all the tasks were done I contacted Miriam’s mother Rosanne and a bit later Andrea and me were on our way to her house.
She lived in a suburb to the north west of the city center. A good 15km from where we were. And boy, do those 15km make a big difference. Gradually the roads got better and better to eventually show no signs of quake damage. On the way we passed houses who were affected by flooding and liquefaction but again these disappeared pretty fast.
At Rosanne’s house there was electricity and it was here where Andrea and me saw the first images of downtown and as you all know, it was not a pretty sight. It also quite a different picture from what we saw in our own neighborhood. In South Brighton there was a lot of damage to the roads, and flooding and all that, but houses were still standing.
It appeared that downtown there were almost no buildings upright and if they were, the were in really bad shape. But the sewage system is damaged everywhere and everyone is advised to dig a whole in a garden to do nature calls. It could last a couple of weeks before toilets can be flushed again.
The rest of the day was spent watching a movie and doing some grocery shopping, trying to de-stress. Stores were open in this part of town. We did feel the occasional aftershock but this time you could actually hear it coming. You heard the rumble before the actual ground started shaking. We called it a night pretty early since none of us hardly got any sleep the previous night.
Goodbye working holiday visas, Europe here I come 