Rattle Your Dags!

An amusing colloquialism I heard shortly after arriving in New Zealand. I’m told it is used in Australia as well.  My suspicion is that it is used anywhere that has an excess of sheep.  “Rattle your dags” shares meaning with “shake a leg” (another apt title for this week’s blog post).  “But what does the phrase have to do with sheep?” you might ask.  It’s rather unpleasant, to tell you up front.  “Dags” refers to the posterior region of a sheep, particularly the area that is not quite so “white and fluffy” as the rest of the animal.  I have indeed “rattled my dags” lately, mostly because Christchurch is doing the rattling.

It was kind of ironic about the earthquakes, really.  We had gone to see the exclusion zone downtown on December 18^th, the last day it would be open to the public before the real demolitions began.  On the way, we passed this rather impressive bit of earthquake damage from February:

This parking lot, near the River Avon downtown, sank a few inches in February.

The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA) had put the walkway downtown together for visitors, but made sure everyone was informed that to enter was at one's own risk. 

 It was eerily quiet and some buildings were missing (notably the aquarium on the square).   The cathedral wasn’t the pile of rubble I was imagining.  It was weird to walk through all the abandoned buildings, listening to the occasional jackhammer in the distance as work on the Grand Chancellor continued.   

Christchurch Cathedral

There were painted signs on many of the doors to businesses that read a date and “all clear,” which noted it had been checked for people.  Most of them had dates a day or three after the February 22^nd quake.  

 Just outside the exclusion zone was the “Cashel Mall” a makeshift shopping area made of containers.  It was actually pretty cool and had drawn quite the crowd for Christmas shopping.  Outside the mall, a band of junior high boys played Christmas carols.

Container Mall.  Part of the Re:Start Program

Carol musicians with the Exclusion Zone behind them.

A couple of days later, we went for a drive out to Sumner, which had taken a lot of rockfall damage.  It's a pretty seaside town, but most of the houses are on pretty bluffs overlooking the ocean.  That didn't go so well in February:

Hope no one was home!

It was approaching mid-afternoon on Friday, December 23, 2011.  Trond’s parents had already headed south to Timaru, where we would join them for Christmas Eve the next day.  We were preparing a late lunch of sandwiches when the 5.8 struck at just before 2PM.  It was clear right away that this was going to be something wholly dissimilar from what I had experienced in Japan.  There is a huge difference between being 400km and 4km away from an epicenter.  Everything started shaking back and forth, dishes rattled in their cupboards, the house groaned and swayed.  Trond jogged off-balance out of the kitchen and barked “Doorway!”  The shaking increased.  It was so loud.  We were crouched and I was holding onto his back.  Time does strange things in moments like this.  It felt like a long time, but the quake only lasted about 15 seconds.

After assuring each other that we were okay, we stood up and began assessing the damage.  Nothing too bad.  The dishes hadn’t come pouring out of the kitchen cupboards as they had in February.   But just to be safe, we put in place the strings and hooks that had been “installed” after February.  Some Christmas decorations had fallen over on tables and a lamp and pepper grinder had made their way to the floor.  Trond methodically checked everything out and I followed him around like a scared shadow, trying to get my heartbeat back under control.  The first few aftershocks were fairly strong and sent us back to the doorway, but they were short jolts.

Next we went upstairs to assess the damage on the upper floor.  Being higher up, the sway was more extreme.  Drawers had opened and contents of cupboards had spilled out a bit.  A few things on the desk were now on the floor, but nothing had broken.  Next we discovered that the power was out.  Moments later, the 2:10 aftershock, another 5.8, hit.  We ran to the doorway in the hall at the top of the stairs.  The swaying was a bit stronger, but we were becoming a little more at home with the shaking.  Nothing new to report after that one.  We tried to get back to life after that.  With the power out, our options weren’t many.  We had been working on a puzzle in the middle “computer” room upstairs.  Trond went back to doing that while on the other side of the room I tried to complete a card we were making for his mother for Christmas.  I would say between every 3 and 7 minutes, there was another little aftershock, but nothing like the 5.8s of earlier.  Eventually it was just, “oh, another aftershock” and back to work.

Then, at 3:18, the 6.0 struck.  By Richter Scale measurements, that means that the 3:18 quake was twice as strong as the 2:00 ones.  It felt so much larger than that to me.  I was sitting at the desk near the door.  I don’t even remember getting from my chair to the doorway.  I have a very vivid memory of my left hand outstretched reaching for Trond, who was across the room.  He made to get up from the couch and the floor rose to meet him at the knee.  He stumbled but didn't fall and was at my side within moments.  The movement of this quake was different, also.  The waves in the earth hit the house from the narrow side (opposite from before), running the length, lifting the wooden structure and twisting it.  I honestly cannot describe the noise.  We were gripping the doorway, but we kept getting thrown every which way.  We were being lifted up and then violently shaken from side to side.  It was difficult to stay IN the doorway.  Huge crashing noises filled the house as we heard things falling over in every room.  I can’t say for sure how long it lasted, probably about 12 seconds.

We stayed in the doorway a few minutes, waiting for the little shakes to finish.  It was time again to assess the damage.  Most drawers had come fully out of chests from that one.  A small bookshelf in Trond’s bedroom had collapsed at the back, but was easily fixable.  A floor-to-ceiling bookshelf in his sister’s room had come crashing down.  

Still trying to understand the geometry of how that happened.  It had been standing next to that door.

 A potted plant in the middle room had shattered all over the place.  

 Downstairs, the strings holding the kitchen cupboards closed had been strained taut and plates could be seen edging their way out.   

Good thing we put those strings there after the 5.8!

 The refrigerator had gone on a walk across the kitchen.  Trond's dad's study was a complete wreck of papers everywhere.  I'm told it was a disaster area beforehand, but now it's simply moved to the floor.

The Christmas tree had fallen over, china had come spilling out of a low cupboard, and all the artwork in the house was eskew.   

We called Trond’s mother with a status report, who then kindly posted messages of assurance on our Facebook pages.  Trond and I went to his car, which we parked on the street away from buildings, and listened to the radio.  Calls were coming in from all over the city.  The GNS was still assessing the magnitude of the most recent ones, so people were calling in to give their own accounts.  This actually did a fair job of telling the public what kind of damage Christchurch was seeing.  Liquefaction seemed to be a big problem again.  Half the city was without power, and some areas were having plumbing issues.  The lament on everyone’s lips was that they were so tired of earthquakes, and right before Christmas, too. (The airport was shut down, which messed up a lot of holiday plans).

We started cell-phoning friends across town in Riccarton, who still had power.  They were another 15-20km away from us, and the epicenter.  Not content to sit by ourselves in a powerless house amidst continuing aftershocks, we got into his car and went over to that side of town.  Someone poured me a nice glass of whiskey.  Aftershocks continued every few minutes for the rest of the day, though we didn’t feel many of them out where we were. 

After watching a movier, we all decided to meet up at another friend’s house, but went our separate ways for dinner.  Trond and I went to a (very busy) fish and chips place down the road.  All the supermarkets but one were closed.  All the malls had been evacuated and closed (much to the anger of last-minute Christmas shoppers) and most stores and restaurants were shut down.   

I took a wander up the shopping alley near the fish and chips place.  Some of the store owners were about, picking things up.  One place was a complete mess.   

Trond wondered aloud (not without some annoyance) how many quakes it would take for people to bolt shelves to the walls.  

Needless to say, I slept very poorly the night of the 23^rd, waking up with every shake and wiggle.  The next morning’s headline for the local newspaper was: “5.8, 5.8, 6.0, 5.0: Here We Go Again.” Before driving south, we did a quick drive to survey the surrounding area. There was a lot of liquefaction along the river roads.   

Liquefaction.  The underlying silt of the soft soil area liquefies and rises up to the surface like a mini-volcano.  I will go on to say that this phenomena has no rules about bubbling up directly into your living room.

 People were out, dressed for hot weather and wearing rubber boots, shoveling silt into wheelbarrows, to be picked up by the city.   

Water bubbled up from broken pipes, and flooding of the streets was not uncommon.  There is a long, narrow lake near where Trond lives that took a lot of “parking lot” damage in the February quake.  No one has gotten around to fixing it (not a big priority).  It’s pretty impressive to see and I’d wager it was made worse by the recent quakes.

 We didn’t feel a single wiggle in Timaru and I was happy to discover I had an appetite again, since the Christmas Eve food was delicious.  We first ate a sort of porridge for lunch. Really tasty.  Apparently, there is a hidden almond in the big pot somewhere and whoever finds it gets a chocolate bar.  Amusingly enough, no one ever found the almond.   

Dinner was a fabulous mutton dish, with potatoes and vegetables.  Trifle for dessert!  Christmas presents were opened on Christmas Eve, not Christmas morning, which I hadn’t done since I was little.  Trond’s niece Ruby very much liked her plush husky from us.  Trond and I took turns reading his nieces’ new books to them that evening.

The next day, Trond and I headed back to Christchurch for “Waifs and Strays” the Christmas party with friends.  It lasted most of the afternoon, and ended with us going to another party afterward.  We didn’t feel aftershocks all day, but they were happening.  As night crept on, I began to get more and more nervous about going back to his dark house.  

Some of you may recall a certain night in Japan when I was suddenly on Skype when you were all awake in the States.  I had been woken up by an aftershock in the pitch blackness, alone in my house in Otobe.  It is that experience, I believe, that affected my sleep that first week or so after these started.  Also, you know how people say that animals freak out before an earthquake?  It’s true. All that week I was lying in bed at night, listening to the birds suddenly become “agitated” at two in the morning, shortly followed by a shake.  I can assure you, it’s incredibly creepy, mostly because it’s so unnatural to hear them at night.  

Also, every time there was an earthquake in Japan, the magnitude and epicenter were up on the internet within three minutes, and tsunami warning within five.  New Zealand doesn’t have this system.  It usually takes about 15-20 minutes to hear about the magnitude and epicenter.  I’m not sure why this is, exactly, but it caused me some discomfort at first. After the first week of my heart leaping into my throat every time someone so much as walked heavily across a room, I started to relax.  There’s no real getting used to them and the sooner you admit that, the better.  I find that being informed helped a lot.  Talking with various people who have lived in the area most of their lives helped.  First and foremost, the geology/geography off the coast of Christchurch makes the threat of tsunamis to be virtually impossible.  This was my biggest concern and so I feel LOADS better.  Also, Trond’s house is made of wood, therefore flexible.  The positioning of his bed in the house is the safest place.  So now when I feel shaking while I’m in bed, I just stay there.

These days, I’ve decided to think of the earthquakes as a feature of Christchurch weather.  You know, “Sunny with scattered shaking in the afternoon.”  It’s gotten to the point of amusement:  The other day we were at a wine tasting with friends and there was an earthquake.  We all started guessing what the magnitude was.  I guessed 4.6.  15 minutes later, we got the news that I “won.”  I got chocolate.  See what I mean about relaxing?

My social schedule has allowed me to cope with the continuing aftershocks in a healthy, beneficial manner.  I’ll always be so grateful to my new friends here for providing me with an outlet for expressing my concerns and their open inclusion of me in their laughter and good times.  As the days since December 23^rd have passed, I find myself nearing a place where I can finally overcome my fears for good.