12.51

Busy day yesterday. I had to get up early to deliver my car to the garage (the right indicator light was not working) so walked back home, about 2 kms. Got home, vacuumed and dusted the house, and bottled the plums I picked yesterday. These are the best plums I've ever tasted, but I don't know what sort they are. I try to get as many as I can, but parts of the tree are too high now, I'll have to get it topped a bit. Then I walked back to the garage, picked up the car, and had a little afternoon nap. Out again at 5'o'clock for a drinkies-thing for leaving colleagues, then on to dinner with friends. Crazy. Some days I do nothing but read a book, other days all sorts of stuff gets done.

Today is February 22. Three years ago, at 12.51pm, there was a massive earthquake right underneath this city. 185 people lost their lives. The city was a chaos of destruction, the army was called in and search and rescue units from all around the world combed the city for survivors and bodies. There was no water, no electricity, no sewage reticulation. For months the confusion continued; places of work that had not collapsed were closed. People left the city in droves. Aftershocks continued daily, further traumatizing everyone.
    Three years on, much of the central city has been cleared of rubble and dangerous buildings demolished.  Ongoing problems with insurance and the government body created to deal with the rebuild have ensured that in many places little or nothing has been done. People are still living in caravans and broken houses while insurance companies dicker about whether the houses should be rebuilt or demolished. Road works are endemic throughout the city. If you need to travel anywhere, you have to check out a website of road closures and plan your route. I could go on and on but... Yes, some good things came of it. People helped each other. And we got used to outdoor Portacoms or poo-ed unashamedly in the garden, cooked on camping gas cookers, and fetched water from the nearest source. We're Kiwis, we just get on with it.
  There's a memorial service in the Botanic Gardens today. I won't be going. I don't need a memorial service to remember; I'll never forget what it felt like and what it sounded like, and the horror of listening to the radio as the body-count went higher and higher. The newspaper today is full of earthquake stories, but I can only read a few. These things are not supposed to happen in your own city, but they do, they have to happen to some of us, somewhere, sometime. You just have to keep going.