We’re absolutely fine

Just after midnight last night we experienced our first earthquake. We were woken by a prolonged (like 30 or 40 seconds) shaking of the house. Not too violent. Not too awful. We were a bit dopey and had no point of reference so let it wash over us. We suffered no damage – the laundry door swung open (we can rebuild).

Then within seconds of the event my phone lit up the room as the GeoQuake app informed us of the quake. 6.6 it said. That was big. Then it corrected itself, 7.5 was the update. That’s really big. The epicentre was 200 kms away, not far from the very beautiful seaside town of Kaikora (where I photographed seals earlier in the year). The quake was only 16kms deep which is really close to the surface.

We jumped online (we have no tv, no radio, precious little internet) only to see the chaos unfolding around the country. Wellington had obviously suffered … but had fared better than Kaikora that was totally cut off.

We didn’t sleep much … aftershocks did little to rock us back to sleep. This morning the civil defence reports were telling us that city centre was a no-go zone. Buildings need to be checked before workers headed into the city. A guy at work did pop into the office … it’s a bit of mess, but nothing a few hours of clean-up won’t fix (and some new lights, a new microwave and many monitors).

The aftershocks are still every couple of minutes but barely noticeable now … occasionally it feels like a big truck is driving past is all.

So yeah, we’re fine … no dramas (and if a tsunami were to hit … we are far too high for it to be a problem).

(the photo is just one I found in the internet – the laundry door was not really very photogenic)