February 22nd M6.3 Christchurch quake

At 12:51PM local time on 22nd February 2011, a M6.3 earthquake hit Christchurch at a depth of only 5km and caused a huge amount of damage and significant loss of life. Here is a list of my tweets concerning this earthquake. Geological details here. Summary map here.

My parents are OK and uninjured, and every relative we know of in Christchurch is OK and uninjured. But I am still having deep trouble processing the notion that the eventual death toll is estimated to be between 100-300 people: 55 official death notifications to next-of-kin so far, 20 waiting in the morgue to be IDed. (Update 2011/02/26: death toll currently stands at 146 with over 200 still missing.)

There but for the grace of god go I…

The picture for my parents’ house is moderately grim, because they were so close to the epicentre (within 3km according to preliminary reports) of yesterday’s shallow quake and to the various shallow aftershock epicentres. Concrete block cladding on one wall of the house came away. TThe TV fell upside down. Shelves came off walls. The piano moved. A heavy planter box outside migrated across the deck. Pretty much everything inside the house is smashed up and on the floor, including crockery and art pieces. Broken glass is a problem too, including multiple large broken plate glass windows. Fortunately, the master bedroom and kitchen were not damaged, apart from everything being thrown onto the floor. There are large scary cracks in the property, which got wider during aftershocks. At least the vehicles seem to have been left relatively unscathed. Finding petrol or cash or food staples will be tough though, as many businesses are out of supplies.

My parents currently have no utilities – no water, no sewerage, and no electricity. Some estimates say it may take up to five weeks (no, that is not a typo!) to restore their electricity because some key transformer assets were damaged in the quake. The landlines seem OK and ditto with mobile phones, but people are still being asked to stay off phones as networks are congested and some emergency calls are not getting through first time. We communicated yesterday pretty much entirely by text message (SMS).

O, my ancestral home!!

My brothers were magnificent, and neither of them lives in Christch. One brother, trained in Search And Rescue, drove down from the Southern Alps and was there super quick to support Mum and Dad, doing an absolutely stunning job in making makeshift repairs to the house as well as looking after them so expertly. The other brother drove down soon after from the North Island bringing a generator and plywood with him and some tools. Bloody brilliant. Aunty and Uncle were also wonderful.

Update: Mum and Dad had to move out for safety reasons – the property may be unstable. Many people in their and surrounding areas (Mt Pleasant, Redcliffs, Sumner, etc.) have been evacuated with far less notice than Mum and Dad had – so full marks to my brother’s civil engineering expertise in sizing up the situation so quickly. They were able to retrieve vital possessions but had to leave behind a great deal. Anything they can buy got left in the house.

Conclusion: everyone should have at least one civil engineer and one SAR-trained person in the family!

By the way, normalizing the 9/11 death toll for population would amount to approximately 39 dead NZers, so this Christchurch quake disaster is a much bigger hit for NZ proportionally than 9/11 was for the USA. Stocks for reinsurance companies worldwide immediately fell after the quake, as did the NZ dollar and the NZ stock market. JP Morgan has estimated the total damage from this Feb.22 quake as sixteen billion dollars (NZD). Apparently this quake has pretty much cleaned out the EQC fund, and Government may impose a levy to refill the coffers.