anyone hear from our New Zealanders

[old joe]

I heard they had a pretty big  'quake.

[RynSmith]

https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php/topic,45709.0.html

Hopefully everyone is OK...   

[bd354]

  I heard from a couple of NZers a few minutes ago on another forum and they said they were pretty close to the center of the quake and hadn't heard of anyone hurt or killed yet. Some buildings damaged but nothing major so far. Hope it stays that way.

[Ianab]

Latest from the local news.

No fatalities reported yet, a couple of serious injuries, falling bricks and glass etc. A lot of damaged buildings, mostly anything built with brick. Damaged water, sewerage and power that's going to take a few days to get straightened out. Luckily it struck at 4:30 in the morning so most people were home in bed, not in the middle of town where most of the damage to older commercial buildings happened.

We are a couple of hundred miles away so slept through it.

I was NZ biggest quake since 1931, and was about the same strength as the recent one in Haiti. We might complain about building codes and inspections, but they saved a LOT of lives today.

Ian

[bd354]

   Glad to hear it turned out as well as it did.

[Ianab]

Been interesting watching on the news the sort of damage that has been caused. While no houses actually collapsed many will be written off. Liquification of the soil under foundation slabs mostly. So houses have tilted or even split in 1/2 with "sand volcanoes" coming up through the floor. They haven't got all the damage totalled up yet of course, but it's thousands of houses that will need to be totally rebuilt.

Bonus, there will be plenty work for builders over the next 12 months.

Ian

[SwampDonkey]

I was thinking the same. Economic stimulus package via nature. ;) All kidding aside though, that's one hardship I wouldn't want to endure. I know it's just a building, but it ain't fun when it happens to yourself. ;)

[Ianab]

You know it's serious when the brewery is closed 

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/canterbury-earthquake/4108339/Brewery-clean-up

Ian

[Meadows Miller]

Gday

It was good to watch on the news that everyones Ok over the ditch Mate  ;) ;D 8) You are still expecting some pretty heavy aftershocks around that area over the net few days from what the news ids telling us here too Mate  ;)

And Whats that Your brewerys closed      dont worry im pretty sure fosters or Cub will send some good Aussie Bee  over Mate  ;)  :D :D ;D 8)

Regards Chris

[IMERC]

I heard they had a pretty big  'quake.

this is from a buddy that lives near Christchurh ..
asked him if he was okay...

Yup!

No damage here at all. Some stuff fell off shelves but nothing broke. I just lay in bed till the shaking stopped and then had a look round and then back to bed.
Quakes don't bother me obviously.

My brother was pretty close to the centre and he has no damage either.
This place swayed like h***....amazing amount of movement. Dogs didn't like it much. Had to stuff one down the bed with me so she would behave. Needless to say she loved that and slept like a baby.

The city got clobbered. Everyone I spoke to had either no damage at all or relatively minor stuff. Lot of older brick buildings got it bad, but they often had a lime mortar that didn't hold so it don't surprise me.

Christchurch is based on a swamp so I imagine the shaking there was as bad as it can get, plus some of the wetter areas had liquifaction problems.....surprise surprise. One beach front area based on pure sand has apparently suffered a lot. Whoda thought?

[SwampDonkey]

Back to bed and stuffed the dog in the sack. :D :D

[IMERC]

a tid bit more from NZ....

The aftershocks have backed off it seems. We don't feel all of them here and those we do are small. The city gets well shaken.

Some areas are totaled, others almost untouched. Been over 120 aftershocks and well over 20 that were 5.0 or bigger.

I don't give a rat's butt about quakes, but lots of people are well freaked out. Plenty of houses to be rebuilt.

[Ianab]

Just in the News, Christchurch just got hit again. Technically it wasn't as powerful as the first quake, but it was much shallower and closer to the city. Much damage and probably fatalties with a lot of buildings that survived the previous quakes badly damaged or collapsing totally.

Still not clear exactly how bad things are as phone and power are out, airport, hospital, police station etc well all evacuated etc so I imagine it's pretty chaotic there right now.

Ian
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4688231/Massive-damage-injuries-in-Christchurch-quake

[SwampDonkey]

Wow, that's quite a mess and for someone to see it happen and the speed of it happening, must have been an intense moment. 

I've been in two quakes here in the 80's around mag 6 , more or less. But no damage, it was epicentered in a  very remote area.

I wonder if there was much earth quake planning in NZ with quakes being quite probable there.

[Ianab]

There is quite a lot of planning and building codes are pretty strict. It's mostly older pre-code buildings from 100 or so years ago that have come down.

But check out this video that a local just posted.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qt0iIHXFnR0



Ian

[SwampDonkey]

I just watched the first few seconds on dialup. Better hustle ladies. 

[beenthere]

That looks pretty serious. Hope for the best for the members and their families, as well as the Christchurch peoples.

[Ianab]

Latest news is 65 confirmed dead, but that's expected to increase as they haven't fully searched all the collapsed buildings yet.   :(

Ian

[WildDog]

We have continuous live coverage on the news, its certainly a scene of devastation, poor souls.

[Corley5]

Wow  :( :(

[Burlkraft]

I just saw some pics on the news

Holy Cow!     

I'm glad the most I have to complain about is the snow!

I hope you guy's are all right.

[fishpharmer]

Its hard to imagine the destruction if I had not seen the photos.
My thoughts and prayers go out to those affected.

[sawguy21]

Is Ernie anywhere near this?

[Ianab]

Is Ernie anywhere near this?

Ernies up here in the Nth Island near me, so he will be fine.

Ian

[Chuck White]

Hard to imagine the devestation!

Glad to hear our Forestry Forum guys are OK!

[isawlogs]

One of our nephews is in Christchurch. He is a student at the University there, he is ok, was in the shower when it happened .. not sure the soap was all washed off  ;)

[clww]

I'm watching it on FOX News right now on Shepard Smith's show.

[IMERC]

these are from a buddy that lives just outside of Christchurch...
(had to edit a little to get past the censers)..

Yup. This one really kicked the **** outa the place. I was on our side of the city, Jane was nearly at work in the city.

She is still trying to get home as traffic is gridlocked. Cant call as phones are overloaded.

People are dead, injured, buildings on fire, collapsed buildings everywhere. A real mess this time, not the warm up mess like before.

She made it only so far and then walked to a work mates house as it was way faster than trying to drive.

I was getting most of the text messages she was sending but she got none of mine.
Her friends hubby drove her home and we filled as many bottles as we had with water for him to take back as all the water supplies are out in the city.

Yesterday we went and got her car. Took 2, 44 gallon drums of water with us to drop off to a couple people as well. The place is screwed. Power still out to nealry 1/2 the city, water is out and will be for weeks. Sewer will not be back for possibly months.
Gas stations are either shut or running low on fuel and supermarkets are low on basics as people are stocking up even though they are being resupplied.

A few looters have been arrested which I think is way better than they deserve. A couple of kids have been waiting for days to see if their mother is going to be found alive in a destroyed building and while they wait some maggot robbed their house. I would donate the bullet and pull the trigger on that one.....

Fewer survivors are being found in the wreckage now and the dead count is at 98 and will go much higher.

When we were driving the long long way round to get the car we saw the stuffed and heaved roads as I had seen last time, the sand and water from liquifaction, the houses with a wall of bricks missing.....all expected. Then we would see a house completely wrecked with the only thing that looked house like was the roof at a crazy angle on top of the rubble. Gas station with the forecourt all heaved as the underground tanks had lifted, lines around the block for water from a tanker truck brought in..........bad man, really bad this time. This will take years to put right.

The environmental arseh**** who are/were working more to protect their egos than either then environment OR the needs of the public have been carrying out a big push for everyone to remove woodburners and install heatpumps. Pumps that use electricity to function, electricity which the city dont got. No cooking ability, no heat if they need it.....nothing.
A local fella some years ago designed and built a woodburner that heated water, the room and produced 10 times less smoke than the minimum allowable levels.....they told him to **** off. Didnt want to reverse a decision and dent their egos. Just wunnerful. Only bright spot so far is it didnt hit in mid winter or it would have been way way worse.


Either way, weirdly, I will get work and an income while a massive chunk of the city loses theirs. Strange really as up till a few days ago i was really stressed about how to pay the bills with no real work coming in.


Everyone I know is OK and has little or no damage.. We are expecting some to arrive in the next day or so for showers etc as we are situation normal here. One advantage to living away from the city...


Just when ya think you have heard about one of the lower forms of life, they exceed even that standard.

Last night 2 scumbags were caught trying to steal generators that the rescue blokes were using to look for trapped people.  They should tie them to a lamp post with a sign around their necks and let things happen...

The work doing emergency repair via that outfit is on hold as the main outfit 'isnt ready'. For ****** sake, they need something 3 days ago not whenever some suit gets his thumb outa his butt.
I am gonna make some calls tomorrow and see what I can get moving on my own. I saw a bunch of houses today that could be weather tighted in a couple days without a lot of work. Not the best but gotta be better than camped out in a park.

We took more water in, supplies are coming back on to the west side, the east is still without and will be for quite a while.. Thousands have left already and we got in OK, but had to line up for gas to get home.
One area we went into has a big cliff on the other side of the road with some pretty big rocks just sitting there. A huge amount of whoppers already came down and buggered some houses. Road is all heaved to hell, deep sand everywhere. They are patching the road and working to get the bridge fixed up to take heavier vehicles. Currently restricted to under 3.5 ton.

Lotta people out helping....digging out sand, handing out water, toilet paper, one place had an extension lead from the house to the street with a sign that said to help yourself to charge a cell phone. Despite all that, thousands need a place to live that is more than temporary. That needs to happen pretty *DanG quick as well. Today it felt like the weather was different. Cooler...more autumn like and although we have still officially still got a good bit of summer left it could be like last year where suddenly and early the temps dropped and we were in autumn.

I dont think we are getting censorship, you know how the media works. The more dramatic the better. Reality is out in the eastern burbs the place has been pounded. Sand and heaved roads can be dealt with, water, power and sewer outage is a lot harder. No place to live out of the weather will just get people sick if not sorted out. We have had some rain and lower temps but nothing bad enough to create serious problems yet..
The port will open tomorrow apparently and food and gas can come in there. Supermarkets and gas stations are being supplied by truck but an awful lot of people are panic buying from both and creating long lines and shortage of gas. . Beats me where the hell they are gonna drive to use up all that fuel they gotta have.
Out this way there is no damage. From the look of the supermarket carpark you would think the world had ended on tuesday and this place was the epicentre.

The CBD is wrecked. Pics on the news all day long.. We keep trying to work out which buildings are which as the damage is so bad that we are struggling to identify them. Got most of it figgured now. It is bad. There will be an awful lot of empty space when all those damaged ones get cleared away. Thousands have no jobs or income. Goobermint is setting up assistance money for them but it pretty much covers food only. I dont know how it will go with mortgages etc.

[Ernie]

Photo taken at the moment the earthquake struck.  Taken from the Port Hills above Christchurch.

[Ianab]

When they say the city is like a bomb site - that picture really brings it home 

Latest estimate is 1/3 of the central city will need to be demolished and rebuilt.

Ian

[jamesamd]

Looking at that photo,I'm amazed that the loss of life was as low as it was.My Prayers go out to all thoes family's,that have lost,loved one's.
Jim

[shinnlinger]

--Photos MUST be in the Forestry Forum gallery!!!!!--/F8VZW.jpg

[IMERC]

the latest from my buddy...
don't know what or how big a Ute is....


Not a lot more to tell.

I got hold of someone about the fixit work. Will get the paperwork done on Monday. Everything is waiting for the goobermint noddies to inspect and provide a list of those houses needing repair. Like it aint obvious when ya drive past.......

No more survivors found since wednesday. Death toll keeps going up.

A newspaper article said this quake was caused by an unknown fault which was independant of the last one, which was also unknown.
I think that pretty much blows the s out of any claims that eveything after last year was going to be an aftershock. This was a whole new deal and we could easily be in for more of the same, or none for a long long time.
I have wondered for a long time how come the thinking is that after a quake the thing has expended the energy and everything is good from now on. Why doesnt it release but in the process add strain to another?..........looks like it does.

Dont know if you got it, but on the day of the quake a ute sized rock got shaken out of a cliff and bounced happily down the hill. It travelled a long way and went clean through a house. It must have been going at one helluva speed. Put big gouges and dings in the ground where it landed from a bounce. It ripped the middle right out of the house. Lucky nobody was in it.

[Ernie]

the latest from my buddy...
don't know what or how big a Ute is....

Ute = utility = pickup truck eg Toyota Hilux

[Ianab]

At least enough time has past for the Jokes to start.

For a local message board, posted by a Christchurch resident.

You know you're from Christchurch when...

1.You use the term "liquefaction" and "seismic design" in casual conversation.

2.Digging a hole and pooping in your garden is no longer weird.

3. Your mayor describes the city as munted. If he means FUBARed, you agree

4.Weaving through car size potholes on the street is no longer weird

5.Going to Wellington to escape earthquakes makes sense

6.A shower is heaven

7.You have a preference of which kind of silt you'd rather shovel, dry or wet

8.You see tanks driving around town

9.You are always noting what you are under

10.Due to frequent aftershocks during the night, you sleep like a baby--every 10 minutes you wake up and sh*t yourself

And added later.

ou know your in Christchurch when a bunch of students turn up and your property looks better after they have gone than before they arrived!!

(Thanks student army, my old auntie and uncle really appreciated your help).

The local Unversity students (the Uni is of course closed) so they are organising work crews to go and help residents clean up. 1,000 students can move a lot of silt from gardens and driveways in a day.

And

- you hear how bad things are in Libya, but things actually look worse outside your own house.

:-\

Latest estimate on the damage, 20 Billion $$$....  Sounds like our Earthquake insurance is going up in the near future  :(

Ian