There's nowhere to run in a quake...

When the ground your car is on is shaking so violently, fences, poles, pavement, bitumen all twisting and warping, you can't help wondering - how bad will this get? Will the shakes and jolts get worse, to the point car and people will be thrown and pounded to their destruction? There's nowhere to run for safety in a quake, there's just the waiting it out to see if you survive.
As I hopped into my dry bed, power on, hot food in my belly, in Rangiora, a safe distance from Christchurch, I couldn't help but feel for those I had passed on the way out, clutching pets and shoes, as they waded through knee-deep water, past vehicles that had nose-dived into giant sink holes in the road.
And those waiting anxiously for word of loved ones still missing in the rubble of fallen city buildings.
As I lie here, my motor home jolts, reminding me it wasn't a dream ...
Just before 1pm, on my way to start a night-shift urban bus run, my car began to behave strangely, as if a bolt had fallen out of the running gear. I pulled off the main road into a side street, in time to see the front of a brick building implode. As I stood on the still-rocking street, texting loved ones, people ran towards the building, calling to see if anyone was inside.
Like everyone else, methodical lifestyle so ingrained, I was soon continuing with "business as usual". But as I waited in traffic another shudder hit and the line of vehicles in front of me rocked and swayed like a line of sailing dinghies in choppy water. Yet still, like everyone else, we all continued on with life, only now, the faces in passing cars seemed somewhat disturbed.
On my way to the bus depot (where I work), streets were littered with new devastation, and shop owners were loading their valuables into cars, I guess for fear of a lockout when their buildings were declared "no-go zones' [as experienced after last year's quake].
At the depot, the historic brick tower buildings that looked over our yard were half fallen, rubble piled on top of bus driver's cars in the car park. Not surprisingly, the buses were no longer running and would be grounded until further notice.
Standing in the yard were two women, one young and one old, passengers from a bus that had cut short its journey and returned to base. They were marooned. So I volunteered to drop them off on my way home. What would normally take 20 minutes took four hours, as we joined the long, stationary lines of traffic out of the city.
We tried to keep away from the main routes, taking parallel side roads but, even so, the roads were choked by the exodus of everyone heading home.
The streets were running with water, and signs of liquefaction were apparent everywhere, springs of water billowing out of miniature cones of grey sand, cracks and sludgy wet sand everywhere. The city, it seemed, was broken not only on the surface but also beneath.
My two passengers were Maureen, from New Brighton, and a student called Georgia, from Burwood. The plan was simple. Take a wide circumnavigation of the city around to New Brighton, then on to Burwood, on my way to Rangiora. But it seemed that every other car driver had the same idea.