Damn Earthquakes...

My first blog post about me! Wow. I guess I finally have something worth writing about.

I was lounging on the couch, talking on the blog and watching TV when the couch started to roll around and judder.

Small earthquakes aren’t too rare around here, especially in the past few days- I swear there’s been one every ten minutes. In a quake, you Drop, Cover, Hold. I was under the table with my brother in about two seconds flat.

It wasn’t anything big, just a tremor, so I was about to climb out and go back to the couch when there was a massive, gut-wrenching jolt that threw me against the table leg. I could hear crashing, creaking, groaning, booming, things thudding to the floor.  The noise was indescribable. My parents were screaming for my brother and I but it was so loud. I couldn’t do anything except hold on to the table leg and wait for it to finish. But just when I thought it was calming down, a second quake hit. Then a third.

When the shaking finally died down, I stayed under the table for about a minute. Everyone waited with baited breath for the rolling to start again. But it seemed we were okay for now.

The TV was still going, which seemed funny to me. Cupboard doors were flung open and the phone was on the floor. Everything had slid off the coffee table. But thankfully, nothing big had been destroyed.

I raced up to my room to check the damage there. I flung the door open to see that the impossible had occurred. Somehow, my room was even messier than I had left it. And that was saying something.

The bookcase had toppled across my floor, spraying books everywhere and blocking my route to the window. The keyboard slipped off the struts keeping it up. My corkboard had fallen off the wall and was on top of the book case. My closet door was open and clothes had fallen off the hangers.

It’s the kind of thing you never expect to happen to you. Sure, I’d seen pictures of devastation, lived with family members in Christchurch, where tremors were the norm and a full night’s sleep was practically impossible. I’d thought about how it would feel if I were the one whose city was shaking. But it’s impossible to imagine how it really feels. It’s just so surreal. If it were one quake, then I could get on with my life. That would be fine. But the earth didn’t stop shaking for the rest of the day. It’s shaking as I write this. I tried to put the books back on my shelves, but an aftershock hit and they fell right back off.

It turned out that the quake was ‘severe’. It was a 6.8 on the Richter scale, and just 17km deep. Within minutes of the disaster, photographers were in the city centre. The pictures were spread across the internet. The cinema I was supposed to be going to on Saturday had gigantic cracks in it. The waterfront, where Mum and I walk and my friends shop, was ruined. The epic lift in town designed to look like a TARDIS (I know! Fangirl heaven!) was broken, and people had been stuck inside. My local supermarket had isles clogged with debris. The library –my second home- was flooded.

Most of it will be okay. The buildings can be fixed. The mess can be cleaned up (Whenever the tremors stop).  Everything will be back to normal by the end of the year. But it’s still… it just… It’s like the quake shook my world apart. It doesn’t feel real.