Christchurch earthquake: Survival in the suburbs

After watching the destruction of the Christchurch Cathedral, Michael Willetts went to the suburb of Avondale to clear liquefaction sludge around his mother's home. Photo / Brett Phibbs

"I was having a hot dog in the Square, felt the rumble, looked around, the middle part of the cathedral came out, and the bottom came out, and the cathedral just come down."

Spade in hand, Michael Willetts begins his matter of fact account of what he saw last Tuesday in Cathedral Square in the heart of Christchurch.

Willetts was in the suburb of Avondale, clearing sludge from his mum's backyard in a street where everyone was out with a spade.

He's like people all over town, telling stories of how they survived and who didn't, of how if they hadn't gone for lunch ... or if their friend hadn't driven into town ...

"Everybody ran," he continues. "I looked around to my left, just saw all the dirt and rubble, people just running, getting trapped under it, statues falling, dodging that."

He saw four people up in the cathedral's spire.

"You saw the dust and a few legs and bodies as they were falling, the middle section of it shot out and you saw them go and then they got covered in the dust.

"Saw two people get hit by a car as the car was swerving to get away from people and people were swerving to get away from cars.

"[It was] just horrific to see the cathedral fall. You only see it in movies.

"I lost two work colleagues at the new Press building that was being built in Gloucester St. I was working at the Press but I'd gone to lunch. The back wall of the Press caved in on to the new one."

Willetts lived in the old Salisbury flats in Colombo St in the city centre.

"We'd just had 90 days' notice they were going to knock them down ... I haven't been home yet, all my possessions I know are stuffed, my new TV, second time around.

"I'm just going through the motions with my mum and stuff. It hasn't set in - it's just, let's take care of family first."

His mother is 81 and living on her nerves, he says. This is her home of many years and everything she has is here.

The garden she loves is under water and that awful sludge he describes as "grit, shit, dirt, smell, stink".

"Every second day she was out here in the garden. It's stuffed," he says.

"It made it really weird, to come from my house which is stuffed to my mum's house, which is stuffed. It's just, where next?"

These stories spill out, over and over, throughout Christchurch.

Kelvin Head drives a digger, but on Wednesday he was pulling dead bodies out of a shattered bus in the central city.

The next day he's parked on Anzac Rd, ahead of a submerged intersection leading into Bexley, waiting for his digger to arrive so he can go in and help clear the "grit, shit, dirt, stink", in which Bexley is drenched.

He tells how three bodies were left in the bus when he got there.

"They couldn't get them out because of the concrete on top of them, it was just unreal. Those old buildings, they've got to go, they're just so dangerous.

"The people on that bus just had nowhere to go, there was just nowhere, it didn't matter where you tried to hide."

They were squashed, he said. "Some of them had probably three or four tonne weights on them, a concrete slab just fell on them. Whole roofs came down, just flattened them, unbelievable.

"It's those old buildings. God knows why but a lot of them have a concrete pillar in the front, it's a massive weight."

For many of the missing in the central city, death would have come quickly, he thinks.

And for the survivors who have sludge in their homes in the suburbs, there are other problems to contend with.

Behind one particularly crooked front fence in Pages Rd lives Eli Dayo, originally from the Philippines, with his wife Donna their children and several overseas students.

They have worked hard to clear the sludge outside - they'll attack the sludge in the laundry later.

Dayo is grateful the liquefaction, which rose so close to the floorboards, didn't break through to the lounge and bedrooms.

The garage is tilted, the house is cracked and there's no water, so he jokes he's built "a five-star" long-drop in a corner of the back yard.

It was no easy task. A huge pile of sandy dirt lies beside the makeshift toilet because every time he dug, more sand and water bubbled up.

Dayo was out during the quake but his wife was home.

The water came up so fast she thought it was a tsunami.

She's now getting ready to leave for Timaru with some of the girl students.

Dayo has ordered her to go. They are shaken and need showers and safety and it's hard without a decent toilet when you're female, she says.

She tells how she joined up with a neighbour with a baby after the house stopped shaking.

The woman's house was going to be pulled down anyway, because of the last earthquake.

"You just saw bubbling water come up and within a couple of minutes of the earthquake, it was all coming up under the house, I couldn't believe how quickly it was coming up."

The shock set in after a couple of hours, she says, and that's when she started trembling.

"I feel like crying now, I haven't cried yet ... once I get to Timaru I'll cry my eyes out.

"I just wish we had a portaloo, that's the hardest thing for us girls. We had one last time and I know we'll not be able to do washing or have showers for weeks and weeks."

At first they were going out to the long-drop half-naked, wrapped in a towel and wearing gumboots because of all the sludge and every time they squatted the water would spurt up again.

This is liquefaction. When it dries it turns into a dust, which gets in eyes and noses. "It's disgusting," says Donna Dayo.

"The earthquake last time damaged our pipes, the plumber said he had to come back and it's $6000 to fix our pipes. He hadn't had a chance to come back and now they'll be all gone."

After the last earthquake she bought an emergency kit with a flashlight you shake and a wind-up radio and luckily the pantry was well-stocked, so they are cooking on the barbecue.

They'll never be able to sell up, she says, because no one's going to buy a house rocked by two earthquakes.

They'll have to stay forever now, she says.

"Nobody's going to be able to sell their homes in the whole east side of Christchurch unless they're willing to lose heaps of money."

A car pulls up in the driveway with a wheelbarrow. These are strangers but the Dayos accept the loan gratefully. Donna's 79-year-old father arrives on his bicycle. The old man is sad. His best friend, also in his 70s, has died of a heart attack, he says.

It was the shock of the earthquake that did it, he says, he's sure of that.