Victim: 'Quake cost my fingers'

The Pyne Gould Corporation building, where Amanda Fuller was trapped after the 6.3 magnitude earthquake in central Christchurch. Photo / Simon Baker

The Christchurch earthquake has cost Amanda Fuller three fingers on her right hand - but despite her injury she feels lucky to be alive.

Ms Fuller, who is now with her father in Weston, was at work on the first floor of the Pyne Gould Corporation building on February 22, the day the magnitude 6.3 quake struck.

She told The Oamaru Mail her story on Friday.

It started like any other day.

"It was four minutes to lunch and I was updating my will," said
Ms Fuller, who works in probate for Perpetual Trust.

Then the quake began. At first, it wasn't too bad and she assumed it was simply another aftershock.

"All of sudden it got very violent and I crouched down behind my desk."

The ceiling crashed down on top of her, a concrete block landing on her right hand and pinning her in place.

When the shaking stopped, she was in the dark.

Ms Fuller was inside a little cave amid the hell of smashed concrete and broken glass, with her hand stuck fast.

"I was trapped and in a lot of pain," she said.

There were people around her - two women in front of her, blocked by wreckage, and a third to the right, concrete lying across her back.

Ms Fuller couldn't reach them because of her hand. They started talking to each other.

Then they heard sirens. They heard drills start. Sledgehammers. Sniffer dogs.

One of the two women in front of Ms Fuller managed to use her mobile phone to contact her fiance and the four of them became the focus of his rescue team's effort.

The team first had to concentrate on freeing the woman to Ms Fuller's right, who was pinned under concrete.

"They got her out, then got the two girls out," Ms Fuller said.

"I kept saying 'don't forget about me!'."

She said her emotions were alternating between denial about her hand - "this can't be happening to me" - and terror that she would lose it.

Adrenalin took over. She was numb to the pain.

She could see her phone flashing with calls and messages.

When rescuers lifted off the concrete block, she saw three fingers fall off her hand.

"I lost it ... I was quite hysterical."

The firemen tried to calm her down. One said he had retrieved the fingers but the first priority was to get out.

Ms Fuller had to crawl through a tunnel in the wreckage, out into a crane lift, which took her to safety.

"It wasn't until I was on the ground I saw the state of the building,'' she said. "I realised I was lucky to get out alive."

It had been five hours since the quake. Ms Fuller was taken to a clinic, where a hand specialist from the Southern Cross hospital assessed whether the fingers could be reattached.

"They were so mushed there was no way they could get put back on," she said.

It was news she had been dreading.

"When they told me, I thought about my colleagues still in the building and the ones which hadn't made it.

"I just think 'well, I'm here' ... I haven't got three fingers but there
are people worse off than me."

She said she was coping reasonably well with what happened.

"I've had moments when I've broken down - there are still colleagues in the building.

"I don't know what's going to happen with them."

However, she is determined not to let the injury affect her.

"It's just amazing what you can do with your left hand," she said.

"I can still text, brush my hair. I'm right-handed so I'll have to learn to write with my left.

"As I say, I think about the people who haven't made it."

- OAMARU MAIL

Note: Amanda Fuller will have been known to many as Amanda Sanders.