The Christchurch Earthquake

Are you alive? Are You hurt? I'd do anything to turn back time.

I was in Christchurch on business. The city was buzzing, counting down the days to when it was going to be hosting the cricket world cup. There was a big torch artwork and a countdown clock in Cathedral Square. My colleague Olesya and I had a bit of time to spare so we toured the cathedral together.

We went inside and the organist was playing on the massive pipe organ. The cathedral was looking beautiful. We paid a small donation and got to climb to the top of one of the spires. It was a lot like my memories of the stone staircase visiting a castle in Holland, Muiderslot when I was a kid, where I had imagined knights fighting their way up the winding staircases.

The staircase in the cathedral was so narrow that there was only room for one person at a time. I got some great photos from the top of the tower.

Fast forward just two weeks.

I was attending a Civil Defence and Emergency services conference in Wellington. The day before I’d had a tour of the Beehive, home of New Zealand’s parliament, and we had a look at the famous foundations, which are made to withstand severe earthquakes as Wellington sits on the Pacific Rim faultline.

We were about to head for lunch after an Australian presentation on rescuing people in forest fires when we felt the tremors. Then the mobiles started ringing in the pockets and bags of senior people from Police, Fire, Ambulance, Civil Defence and military.

At 12.51 p.m. on Tuesday 22 February 2011, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake caused severe damage in Christchurch and Lyttelton, killing 185 people and injuring several thousand. It was the second earthquake in 2 years, but this was a big one.

I had friends and colleagues in Christchurch, some of which had extremely stressful experiences and the city as we knew it has never been the same.

I visited on business a couple of weeks later and took a lot of photos. Aftershocks were still coming in waves which would have given some people vertigo.

After I flew back home I wrote this song and included a photo montage of photos I had taken on that trip of the cathedral and also the Arts Centre, which was also badly damaged.

The story in the song is not a real one, but it echoed the experiences that occurred on that tragic day in New Zealand history.