12:51pm, 22nd February 2011

Tuesday 22nd February, 2011 is a date that will be fixed in my mind forever. It was the day in which much of my hometown was destroyed.

Tim and I had just arrived home with Vivi. It was around 2:30pm in the afternoon. We got inside and I flicked on the radio as usual, hearing snippets of 'major earthquake, devestation.....' but not really registering, thinking that it must have been something that had happened overseas. I opened my laptop and brought up the 'stuff' website, to see what had been happening in the world that day. That's when I saw the headline that made my blood run cold: 'Major earthquake in Christchurch - hundreds injured'.

My hands shook as I dialed my Dad's cellphone number. No answer. I hastily dialed Mum's cellphone -it went straight to voicemail. All the while images were flooding through my mind - devestated buildings, people injured, many feared dead. I knew Mum and Dad would have been at work in the CBD that day and I feared the worst. I rang their home number only to find that it rung twice then stopped ringing. Finally, in desperation I rang my Brother. They're ok, he reassured me, they had managed to make it out of the CBD and were at home. Relief was immediate, but I still needed to talk to them, just to make sure. I was also relieved to hear that our 88 year old Grandad was ok, and around at Mum and Dad's place.

We spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening at my sister's house, staring in disbelief at the images that flickered across the TV screen on the special news bulletin - injured people, devestated buildings, liquifaction pouring up through the streets, rescue teams working valiently to free those trapped in buildings. How could this be happening? I managed a brief phone call to my Dad on his cellphone but we weren't able to speak for long due to their power not being on. Words cannot describe how upset I felt when I heard to him refer to the earthquake as the 'most frightening experience of my life'. It turns out that Dad was at work in town at the time, opposite South City mall. He managed to get out of the building after the quake struck, and then ran through town to Mum's building as he hadn't been able to get in touch with her. No doubt he saw some truly awful things in town that afternoon as he ran through the devestated streets. Days later Mum told me about the terror she felt as she made her way out of her building that day - from the 5th floor down the stairwell, only to find when they got to the bottom of the building that they were trapped as the automatic doors were locked shut. Luckily, they managed to escape through a small window that someone was able to smash.

As I type these words the death toll from Tuesday's earthquake stands at 159 and will no doubt rise much higher. So many people have lost their lives. We are lucky as a family - no one hurt or killed, yet I can't help but think about the other families who have lost loved ones in such tragic circumstances. Especially tragic (for me) was hearing about the two little babies that had passed away as a result of the earthquake - a nine month old and a five month old. I find my eyes welling up with tears when I look into Vivi's smiling face and think of these young babies whose life was all too brief.

This earthquake has affected me deeply. I have been so worried about my family (although I was able to fly Mum and Grandad up to Wellington on Friday, although not Dad unfortunatley as he had to stay put due to being overloaded with work). I feel so helpless hearing the despair in their voices, knowing that there is little I can do from here. Their lives have been changed forever. They will return tomorrow to a devestated city and will start to begin rebuilding their lives. In the meantime, I am trying to keep the anxiety that this could happen again, at bay. I wish with all my heart that they were able to get out of Christchurch for good.