Glad to hear you are ok, Stonehart. Hope your house and everything are ok. Me and my partner decided to get out of Christchurch in the end so that we weren't a burden on the power, sewerage and everything. So we're now down in Alexandra away from the earthquakes and the horribleness. For those that don't know, the body count is going up unfortunately. Its now at 75 I believe and still may go up to a couple of hundred. It seems we've lost a few of our local celebrities. The local tv station, a little one called CTV was totally demolished and a few of the local amiable small town celebs were killed (we think) as the building came down which was very sad. They were faces I'd seen on the tv in Christchurch for years and now it seems they are gone. You kind of vageuly knew them although you never really knew them personally. It puts an entirely different slant on things when something like that happens. It makes it more personal I suppose. Up until now the whole thing has been unreal. I live only a couple of miles I guess from the city centre. Its not that far, and to see pictures of the kind coming from the city centre in a house that wasn't damaged really in any way just makes everything unreal. The pictures could be coming from the other side of the world all I knew. Even when I was told that some of the partner's of my partner's work colleagues were unreachable it didn't really become a full reality. Now the scale of it all is slowly seeping home and familiar faces are apparently no longer with us, it brings it home to you more.
Anyhow. The next thing that might be quite scary is that a big hotel here in Christchurch, the Chancellor may collapse at some point soon. Its a tall building, for Christchurch and it slightly leaning to one side. I have no idea whether there are people inside still or not, or if they have been evacuated from there ok. But it may come down at any point. Apparently according to an expert on the tv this morning I think it was if it comes down it will be like an earthquake of about 2.2 on the richter scale. It will probably unnerve people a bit but it won't be on the same kind of scale of 9/11 when the WTC buildings came down. Still it'll cause more disruption and dust that won't help. And of course it may damage more buildings as well but we'll see if and when it happens.
NZ has now declared a National State of Emergency. The first time I believe that has happened in its history. And its become something of an international disaster/emergency with teams of people from all over the world coming in to help with their expertise and equipment.
So ... its all go over here. It looks like Christchurch is going to be rather messy for quite a while, and the economic cost is anyone's guess at this time. At this moment I think noone is really interested in the economic problems which will come from all the businesses that have been destroyed or majorly disrupted. Except for that is economics media business types of course who are not interested in humans or anything of real value.
Anyway, keep watching the news for further updates. Or not ... depending where you are ... or aren't
Hope all is well at your ends, wherever you are ... and especially those in the Christchurch/Cantebury area.
Take care
paraschtick
ps I can't be bothered correcting any grammar and spelling at the moment ... so this will have to do ... lol