What's working / what isn't

On a personal level:

• We got electricity and water back a few days after the earthquake. Going to the toilet in a plastic bag became the new norm for people in this city, but people on our street only had to do that for a few days. Some people are still doing it now.
• Tap water has been chlorinated in the last few days but is still not safe to drink or cook with. Everything has to be boiled before it can be used, but that's not practical in the shower. I come out of the bathroom wondering if I'm less clean than when I went in. The boil water notice should be lifted once the chlorine gets through the whole system, but then we get to smell like a swimming pool at all times. Lovely.
• Our house shows only very minor damage (apart from to contents which were flung everywhere), just a few cracks in the plasterboard where boards join, and some flaking paint in the corners.
• Our garage, despite being badly cracked in September's quake, shows no new damage now. We were told by EQC in early February that it would have to be demolished and rebuilt, but I assume that has been shoved way down the list of priorities. It's certainly less important than fixing somebody's house.
• My husband and I are both working fairly normal hours in work that is reasonably close to what we normally do.

On a grander scale:

• Our part of the city is very badly damaged. I don't know how we escaped so lightly, given what surrounds us. Liquefaction, broken walls, broken buildings. Five minutes on foot will take me to our local park, which has ruined rugby pitches and badly cracked and slumping paths. The little drain that runs along the perimeter, which is normally a stream with ducks swimming on it, is now an open sewer. Another couple of minutes on foot takes me to our local shopping mall, which has to be partially demolished, and our local shops which have collapsed on one side of the road. 
• The city centre is a complete mess. A month after the earthquake, building and business owners still don't know what is happening with their property or their livelihood. The CBD is cordoned off for safety reasons (not just overly PC safety reasons but very genuine ones, given the huge aftershocks we are still having and the risk of people being electrocuted or otherwise harmed by broken power connections) and nobody knows when it can be reopened. It must be a really awful time for those who own irreplaceable stock or personal items and are terrified -- with good reason -- that the building will be demolished before they have a chance to rescue anything.
• My office building, housing well over 1000 staff, will not reopen for at least a couple of months. It has some minor damage but is surrounded by buildings that need to be demolished. Even if my office had no damage at all, which is not the case, it would not be safe to go anywhere near it. So all the staff have been distributed around various locations in the city, often without their own computers or any access to the staff network (computer network and also people network). I'm working from home this week but have no idea where, or on what, I'll be working next week. Right now I'm just grateful that my employer is still in business.

February 22 Earthquake: My Experience

Hereford St just after the quake

My husband and I had popped out to buy some lunch, and were walking along Hereford Street heading towards the river and our office building. We were almost outside Mythai Thai Restaurant & Monkey Bar (which was red stickered in September and still cordoned off while being repaired) when the quake hit. Almost immediately we could hear and see debris crashing down around us. We tried to run into the road but it was impossible to direct ourselves because the ground was moving too much. We managed to stagger away from the buildings and were not hit by anything but it was extremely frightening. I'll never forget the sound of glass and bricks shattering around us, and the screams of other people on the street.

Damage to Mythai

When the shaking stopped we realised that Mythai had been severely damaged. If it hadn't already been cordoned off then we probably would have been on the pavement right beside it and been killed. The concrete kerbstones on Hereford Street were buckled and broken. We had to cross the Hereford St bridge to get back to our office building and see what had happened there and it was also buckled in the middle -- we had to jump over it.

Buckled bridge

At this stage I knew things were bad but had no idea just how badly that part of the city had been hit; we happened to be walking away from the worst of the devastation rather than towards it. It wasn't until we walked home along St Asaph St and saw what had happened in Colombo and Manchester streets that I grasped the magnitude of it. I still don't know how we got through the day without a scratch.

Damage to Colombo Street