Rocketship

There is also a carousel with horses and rocketships. James chose the rocket. 

Crazy Golf

There is heaps to do for James. He likes crazy golf and actually got a hole in one! 

Picton Foreshore

This week we are having a holiday in Picton. This is a small town in the Marlborough Sounds. 

By Jove I can see Uranus

Not a great photo but not too bad for a snap from the back garden. I did not use a telescope, just my camera on maximum zoom (x12).

At the top is Jupiter with three of it's moons. Left to right they are Eurpoa, Io and Ganymede. At the bottom is Uranus which is 2.9 billion kilometres away (it takes light over 2 ½ hours to reach earth). I could see Jupiter clearly with the naked eye and the moons with binoculars but I needed the camera to see Uranus. I used a 3 second exposure.

Birdlings Flat

Went out to Birdlings Flat today to collect some more stones for the garden. The waves are always wild here.

Rebate

Here I am routing out the rebate for the back panel. 

Another New Project

My latest project is a mission style bookcase. I am making it from Tasmanian oak. Here is the bottom of one of the side panels. This is a big project which will take me some time. 

Fault Line

A couple of big shakes over the past couple of nights but things are quietening down somewhat. I love this photo from GeoNet. It shows the fault line running from left to right across the middle of the photo. Before the quake the line of trees was straight.

Wobbly

It is hard to imagine how much the ground must have shifted to cause this kind of damage to a steel bridge.

James suggested that he knew who could fix it. "Who?" I asked. "Superman" he answered.

Bridge

This foot bridge across the Avon has been badly twisted. The bridge has barriers across it to stop people walking on it. They don't seem very effective as we saw several people risking it. I reckon this will be a magnet to young kids. Imagine taking a skate board across that. To be honest if Tracy and James weren't with me I would have had a run across.

A Closer Look

Pathway

This pathway was torn apart. Unfortunately this kind of thing has happened to the ground beneath a lot of houses.

Geology Lesson

The news is full of articles on how to help children traumatised by the earthquake. Fortunately James has handled the whole thing very well. He can tell you all about plate tectonics and how they rub against each other and make the Earth shake.

Cracks

This morning we went for a drive along the River Avon. All along the river banks there are large cracks in the ground.

Restoration?

Chip Shop on Barbadoes St

In the last week we have experirenced over 350 earthquakes, 90 with a magnitude greater than 4 and 12 of them over magnitude 5. Several times a day the house shakes.

The aftershocks have become so commonplace that people are now playing a game. After a shock comes through everyone guesses at the magnitude. About 10 minutes later the report appears on GeoNet. Closest to the actual magnitude wins. I first noticed Tracy and Sandra playing this at home but it seems to have spread through every office in Christchurch.

Fortunately, the frequency and size of the aftershocks does seem to be decreasing and life is returning to normal. Our water no longer needs boiling and the cordon around the city centre was relaxed today.

More aftershocks.

Last night there were several large aftershocks and this morning we were shook by a big one. It was only 5.1 but was very shallow and made the whole city shake. Tracy was going to return to work but the polytech needs to be reassessed after this latest quake.

There is a great map of the quake and the aftershocks at http://www.christchurchquakemap.co.nz

Update

The city centre is under a state of emergency and only authorised people are allowed in. Some suburbs have been hit very hard and I know several people who have lost their homes. It is estimated that up to 20% of houses will have to be rebuilt.

In our area things are getting back to normal. The shops are open though the corner shops in the picture below had to be demolished. Power and water are back but we still have to boil drinking water for three minutes. I am back at work and Tracy should be going in tomorrow.

There have been over 100 aftershocks since the big quake and this has people a bit jumpy. I am very tired from being woken repeatedly during the night. Some of the older buildings in the city centre have been further damaged by the aftershocks and will have to be demolished.

Everyone is amazed that no one was killed. The earthquake in Haiti earlier this year was smaller than the one we experienced and over 100,000 people were killed. We were lucky, the quake struck early in the morning when most people where in bed. If it had happened during the day many people in the city centre would have been killed by falling debris. The other thing that saved us was our low density wooden homes.

James has been brilliant during this, he now knows all about how earthquakes happen and will explain it to anyone who will listen. Aftershocks don't bother him, if he even mentions them at all it is to say 'That was a big one, eh!

Van

This van on Rugby St was caught by the bricks falling from the nearby church.

Chip Shop

Tracy's dad used to get his fish and chips here.

Road

There are some large cracks in Edgeware Rd.

Edgeware Church

It seems that brick buildings fared very badly. I am so glad that I live in a one storey wooden house. Wood bends, bricks crumble.

Power Pole

A power pole crashed through the fence on the corner of Massey Crescent.

Liquefaction

The new buzz word is liquefaction. This is the phenomena where sandy wet ground turns to liquid during an earthquake. The liquid mud had bubbled up to the surface all over town. In some of the eastern suburbs the mud has destroyed houses.

Bedroom

Sat on the corner was the bewildered occupant of this apartment. I think it is amazing he survived.

Corner Shops

The shops on the corner of Westminster and Cranford St looked like they had been hit by a bomb.

Chimney

Most of the neighbours have lost their chimneys or they were badly damaged. In some cases the chimneys had landed on cars.

Amazingly no one was killed in this quake and there were only two serious injuries.One of these was caused by a falling chimney.