Earthquake: Haircut may have saved PGC survivor

The Pyne Gould Corporation building in central Christchurch after the 6.3 earthquake. Photo / Simon Baker

A haircut probably saved the life of a Canterbury man who would normally have been at his desk when Tuesday's deadly earthquake struck.

Trust consultant Jeremy Richards said he believes he would be dead if he had been sitting at his desk on the first floor of the ill-fated Pyne Gould Corporation building at lunchtime on Tuesday.

Instead, Mr Richards was sitting in a barbershop, on the ground floor of Ballantynes Department Store, listening to the hum of a razor when the magnitude 6.3 quake hit.

"John, my barber, started cutting my hair and then a few minutes later the building started rocking a little bit and then very violently...

"Hair products and other things all came cascading down on top of me," he said.

The building seemed to shake for about 15 seconds and lights flickered on and off, he said.

However, his barber was determined to finish cutting his hair.

"He said `well, I haven't quite finished' and he grabbed his battery-powered razor to finish the back of my neck in the gloom of the basement."

Mr Richards even paid his barber before racing outside to find people screaming and running in the dusty street.

"I walked then, as fast as I could, up Colombo Street and to my horror I saw the spire of Christchurch Cathedral had crashed to the ground and spewed across Cathedral Square.

"It was then I realised how serious this shake or aftershock was."

He anxiously made his way to the Pyne Gould building to make sure his colleagues from Perpetual Trust, a subsidiary of Pyne Gould, were safe.

"The ferocity or violence of it really took me back...(but) I certainly didn't have any worries for our building. In September, we barely had a folder tip over," he said.

However, he arrived to find a scene of "utter devastation".

"To my absolute horror I saw the five-level Pyne Gould Corporation building had pancaked into a building half its size. I couldn't believe what I saw."

One of his distressed workmates staggered outside covered in blood and hugged him, he said.

When he realised some of his colleagues were still trapped in the building, he felt "absolutely sick".

He ran to the back of the building and he and others made a makeshift stretcher to carry a colleague to safety.

Apart from a trip home to change out of his suit, he then stayed outside the Pyne Gould building until 2am to help police work out who was in the building.

"I spent a considerable amount of time helping construct floor plans as to where people were sitting," he said.

He returned the next day to continue helping police and was prepared to identify quake victims if necessary.

Mr Richards, who flew to Wellington at the weekend to visit a colleague in intensive care, said he had worked with about 45 people on the first floor and some of them had not survived the disaster.

"The reality is that a quarter of Christchurch staff at Perpetual Trust may perish in this tragedy," he said.

He was not a good sleeper at the best of times but now it was almost impossible.

"It's the waking up in the middle of the night and just seeing images of those people who are injured and thinking of the families of the ones who didn't make it," he said.

Mr Richards has worked for Perpetual Trust since 1998.

- NZPA