Sunday 17 April 2011

So, we had another earthquake last night. Actually we had a rash of them yesterday afternoon and then at dinner time we had a 5.3 that rocked the house. Sebastien was helping Dom do the dishes and he got all excited and started prancing around the house squeeling excitedly... this set Megane off who started yelling "Mum! Make it stop! Make him stop!" and Lucy got scared and came and cuddled me and said "I don't want to died from crushing!!" Poor angel - it was noisy and everything shook like mad (only a couple of things fell) but it was okay. There was no need to fear death. We were lucky and no one was injured, but the sewer system was *destroyed* again (sob!), a lot of houses/roads/parks over by the beach have been recovered with liquifaction silt and power was out to the east side of town.

Dad came over after work this morning. He had another long night so he is actually going to go home and sleep today. When we saw him yesterday morning he had been on duty for 24 hours and had been BUSY the whole time. He had spent the day in red-stickered buildings helping people get their important papers out. He was on a high rise building with a crane to transport them to each level. They were taken up the outside of the building where they removed the external window (with a chainsaw around the metal frame), "cleared" the area (this means he has to check to make sure it is safe), then he escorted the residents/workers in while they got their essentials. Well, they were supposed to get their essentials but he said they went mad and were trying to take all kinds of things out. The owner of the building (who lives in the penthouse) rented the crane for $800 an hour and he wanted to make the most of it. Everyone was allocated 30 minutes max but they would get a load then take it down to the ground in "the cage" and then headed straight back up to get more... Dad and the boys were helping the people in and out of the window-entry, and all their stuff. By the end of the day they were exhausted but Dad then had night-shift. They were out all night with fires, car crashes, fire alarms going on... He had to drive an ambulance at once stage because the abulance workers were saving lives or something. They also got called back to the scene to hose brains off the road (of which he said there weren't any but the police wanted to be sure no one got an eyeful when the sun came up). I just don't know how he does it. Last night he had a fire in a cupboard (???), and lucky Dad had to get up into the roof cavity thru the burning cupboad (the manhole was in the ceiling of the cupboard) with his BA gear on etc... and then the guy next door (who shared the roof cavity with the burning apartment) refused to leave the building so Dad had to go and have a wee chat to him about it... and the apartment was FULL of guns, computers, surveillance stuff etc. I bet that was a fun fire to put out - know that the flat next door was an ammunition depot!

On the other hand, it is FINALLY the school holidays! I will have two blissful weeks of playing with the kids and preparing for next term. I'm really tired so I will try to relax as much as possible... Yahoo!