Aftershock

We'd only been back in our house maybe five minutes before the power came back on. I guess that was a perk of being on the same block, and therefore the same power grid as the regional Council building.

Turning on the TV, it was amazing to hear that so far there had been no casualties reported. The only injuries of significance that were being announced were a man that was hit by a falling chimney, and another man who'd had glass fall on top of him.

One thing I can say for natural disasters - they're great for family bonding time!

The rest of the day was spent continuing to clean up our house, a trek to my aunt's house in the city suburbs (she only had one breakage, but a lot of cracking in her ceiling), and then the last stop was my mother's work.

She was the office manager at a supermarket, and understandably the place was a mess. Half of the stock had come off the shelves and the ceiling tiles had caved in, along with an air conditioning duct collapsing through. Thankfully, most of the messy work had been completed by the time we arrived, but my sister and I still got stuck with the olive oil, pickled onions and relishes aisle. Our parents didn't fare quite so well, being left to clean up spilled vinegar.

After roughly 90 minutes the shop was cleaned up to the store manager Penny's standards and we were free to leave into the wide world full of fresh air. The ride back home confirmed what we'd noticed on the way into the city - this side of town, the west, had very little damage. Aside from a couple of fences and cracked chimneys, there really wasn't any major noticeably out of the ordinary.

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Having gotten barbecue food out of the freezer early in the morning while power was still off, it only seemed logical we stick to the plan of cooking it that night. Sure, anything could happen, with aftershocks still coming several times an hour, but it's not like we didn't have a chest freezer full of other meat that could still be used if we had no power tomorrow.

Seeing as Sandy and Pete were without power at 4pm, the "Hansen Bar" was declared open, and they arrived for some well-needed alcoholic therapy. By then the earthquake had been downgraded to a 7.3, and we'd found out it was centred about 20km away (12 miles). Still, pretty damn close for comfort.

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Sunday was almost a normal weekend day for us. Well, you know, except for how the ground barely stopped shaking during the 232 aftershocks that were recorded. But other than that it was fairly standard.

Ummm can this shaking stop for a second? Feel like I've been on a boat all day! #earthquakelegs #doesntsoundright

dreaandrea: @E_Hansen damn girl, things are crazy over there! I feel like you need to move here so we know ur safe. Seriously!

@dreaandrea you know I would if I could girl! Miss u hardcore <3

More cleaning and organising, most of our fragile items now held pride of place on the floor, and I finally got around to picking my bookshelf up off the floor. It wasn't worth putting it back up because with the force of the shocks we were still getting it would soon be down again. Therefore, I laid the bookshelf itself on its side across the front of my wardrobe, with all the books and random other crap that previously adorned it in piles by the wall.

Mostly the day was just spent hanging out with the family, guessing at the magnitude of each shake, watching news coverage of the damage across the region, which was fairly extensive. The historic Deans Family Homestead was crumbling (they were the main founding family of Christchurch), a lot of the other historic buildings throughout the city had extensive damage and there was a lot of road damage and liquefaction across the eastern city.

The main earthquake itself was once again downgraded in magnitude, now to a 7.1. Not that a numerical value meant much to us, we still had the same amount of damage either way.

A call from my boss let me know that our office was out of action until it'd been checked for structural damage, so she'd decided to close down for the week. A budget advice service, most of our clients came from the poorer eastern suburbs so it was unlikely they'd be making their meetings, so it wasn't worth going in. I couldn't complain with that.

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The next 'major' event wasn't until Wednesday morning, when I was unceremoniously woken by the phone ringing off the hook. By sleeping with my door closed, I usually avoided this fate by blocking out the sound, but for some reason that morning the sound seemed to travel across the hallway and through the wooden door effortlessly.

Knowing there was no way I'd reach the phone in time, I let it go to the answering machine as I rolled over to go back to sleep. Just as I started to doze about a minute later the phone started again! I got to it just as the answer phone clicked on, whoever was calling hanging up at the message.

I figured it wasn't worth tempting fate and waited 30 seconds before heading back to my warm bed. You guessed it, as soon as my butt hit the mattress the damn phone starts up! Managing to actually answer it this time, I was greeted with my mother's concerned voice, asking if I was ok.

Clearly, I had no clue why that would be of any importance to her during her regular workday, seeing as I'd been home alone during the last two days anyway. But no, there was an actual reason for her frantic calling - another big shake had struck the city. There was once again stock all over the supermarket floor and the building had initially been evacuated.

A magnitude 5, centered on the Port Hills to the south of the city, at 7:49am had set people into panic-mode again. And I'd slept through it.

By comparison, Wednesday was a relatively quiet day. By now we'd discovered the amazing www.christchurchquakemap.co.nz, which mapped each aftershock along with magnitude and depth. It was really interesting watching the animation, plus it helped with our 'guess the magnitude' discussions.

By that stage, after going through over 750 tremors, we were becoming quite adept at picking out just how severe each shock was. Feeling aftershocks was now commonplace, there was nothing to do but carry on despite them, they were now an everyday part of life.

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Things carried on that way, life going back to normal quickly. Heading to work on Monday was another eye opener. The further into the city I got, the more damage was visible. The church I parked next to had lost a few old stone bricks from it's façade but otherwise seemed to have gotten through the week's events well.

Walking into the office, I was greeted with a hug from Jan, my boss. "It's so good to see you again!" she laughed.

"You too," I smiled back, surveying the room and through the door to my office. A few things had come off the shelves and desk, but otherwise we'd come out lucky. "Have you had any luck finding a new place?"

Jan was one of the unfortunate - her house, which was alongside the city's main river in the worst affected part of the city, had been severely damaged in the first shake, enough that it had been 'yellow stickered' which meant that she could only go in to retrieve her things, not live in it.

"Yea, one of my friends had a junk room that they cleared out so I can move in this weekend." In the meantime she'd been living at her daughter's, whose family was heading south to Dunedin for her husband to keep us with his dialysis. "Hopefully it wont be too long before they decide it needs to be demolished and I can start over again."

The rest of the day was mostly spent catching up with the other tenants of our building, retelling our accounts of the earthquake countless times.

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By mid-December we got a call from the Earthquake Commission (EQC) to do a damage assessment from our claim. The EQC is a government department that deals with insurance for natural disasters; if you have household insurance you are automatically covered.

A thorough inspection of the house was undertaken, everything from spider-cracks around the window frames, to a bulge in the wall, to moved bricks, to chipped tiles was taken note of, along with our claims for contents damage.

The guy doing the contents claim was amazingly laidback, he only looked at the damaged items (that still we had sitting in the garage for proof) because mum asked if he needed to - "Oh, I suppose I should." We had to talk him into taking the photos of cracked TV's, impaled laptop, and broken Greek vase (worth almost a thousand NZ dollars), because we didn't want the claims refused on lack of evidence.

All in all, the calculations the guys came up with figured we'd receive around $8,000 in contents payment, and less than $10,000 for the house damage. Except that mum decided she needed to add the cracked shower base as well (it's been a problem since we moved in, but did actually crack further in the quake). That put us over the 'magic' $10k figure that determined whether it was a simple payout, or if the work would be referred to a builder to complete.

By now things had really settled down. We were down to mostly single figure daily aftershock totals, and things were amping up for Christmas. It would be quieter than normal for most people, but it was still a good chance to let the stress go amuse itself for a few days and enjoy life again.