Open Writing

Not a murmur, not a sound. The church bells rang to mark the beginning of the two minutes silence, just one week after it had happened.

Folk had gathered around churches, cenotaphs and parliament buildings, but as the bells rang the ordinary man in the street, the woman on the checkout machine at the supermarket and the housewife hanging clothes on the line, stopped.

For two minutes New Zealand did not move.

The rescue workers from overseas, the worn out civil defence, fire brigade and paramedics from all over New Zealand, dirty and dusty, the haggard looking Prime Minister and the millions of people with tears pouring down their faces just stopped.

Why?

The big one had arrived. In September last year the first massive quake hit Christchurch. It was the middle of the night and no-one was seriously hurt. The quakes continued, they have never stopped, and now the big one. Our beautiful city of Christchurch is no more. Christchurch, the Cambridge of the south, the Avon river winding its way through the parks and round the city, the punts slowly moving along with folk in boater hats propelling them. Afternoon tea and music in the gardens. So English and yet so New Zealand, the “Garden City.” The huge trees in Hagley Park, beech, oak and sycamore lie uprooted, the little bridges and the walkways are no more.

At ten to one in the afternoon, when Christchurch was at its busiest, it fell to pieces, the earth literally caved in and Christchurch, as we knew it, ceased to exist.

For a while we paused and then the enormity of the event hit home. Everything had gone. The spire of that beautiful cathedral had collapsed into the nave. The buildings around the square had literally fallen down. The ground had liquefied and become a sinking sand of silt and mud. Cars slowly slipped under it. The old, much admired University buildings, now the Arts centre, where Rutherford had worked, all the things which made Christchurch so beautiful and so English, damaged or gone.

And what of the people? In the afternoon the city was full of visitors, shoppers, office workers and children in the language school, where were they? Under the rubble, either dead or alive, we were yet to find out. On the outskirts homes disintegrated and roofs vanished, roads buckled and sewage pipes and water pipes burst, power lines fell and those poor people, who from September last year had lived in fear, discovered that now they were not in the London Blitz but something akin to Hiroshima.

The Prime Minister declared a state of National Emergency and the army and the navy were called. As luck would have it an army exercise was being held near Christchurch at the time and the main army barracks, in the South Island, is close to Christchurch anyway. A naval vessel, just by chance, was in Lyttleton harbour. Lyttleton, Christchurch’s port, is over a huge hill and the tunnel through it was closed as was the road over the top. The navy could check on Lyttleton and it could check on Akaroa too, as neither place could be reached from the city, and it could bring in supplies.

The army headed for the city, but not only the army, from all over New Zealand civil defense teams, paramedics, fire fighters and any one capable of handling heavy machinery headed their way towards the centre. Halls, schools, even the prison was emptied, anywhere which had room was set up as barracks for the men and women to sleep in. All the hospitals around New Zealand were on stand by, clearing their wards and waiting, but for what?

A huge cordon was put around the worst affected area and the police kept people away while the experts got to work. They slowly moved the equipment in, moving things which could be moved without further damage. Sniffer dogs busily earned their keep, those wonderful animals, listening devices were lowered through crevices and cameras inserted wherever possible. The dead were ignored, they could wait. They searched for the living. Some had to have limbs amputated on the spot and others were removed intact, all to be transferred to ambulances which would head for the aircraft waiting to take them to the waiting hospitals. And they worked on through the night.

Teams of helpers arrived from Australia, Japan, China, Britain and the U.S.A. They brought massive amounts of equipment and set up field hospitals, almost like M.A.S.H. But most of all they were there to give our folk a break, the chance of a rest.

And the rest of the people, the ordinary folk, they were there to help too. One man walking back to his billet called into Subway, a sandwich bar. “Hungry mate?” the man behind the counter said, “bring your truck round.” He did and waiting for him were enough sandwiches to feed everyone, no charge. The women cooked up soups and stews, good wholesome and filling food, baked and served their bottled fruit and collected the dirty washing. Everyone pitched in and helped. From all over New Zealand came offers of accommodation, children were allocated to schools elsewhere and students found other universities. One thought of the evacuees in England during the war. In times like this the best comes out in people.

Now it is the turn of the dead. How many we don’t know but the numbers keep climbing. The workers don masks to keep out the dust and they try to find a way into the cathedral and other buildings. The bodies are brought out and put into temporary morgues, a lot unidentifiable, we wait for DNA tests and dental records. And the work goes on and will go on for months yet, until the area is cleared of all rubble and as many bodies as can be are found. No doubt in many years to come archeologists will find the ones we didn’t.

It will be years before they start to think about what to do about Christchurch, if anything, but that beautiful city we all knew and loved has gone forever.