The information from work was passed on to me through the office grapevine from our Christchurch team – they have some of experience of the odd #eqnz 😦 

I’ve stolen it verbatim, with little editing.

Many of us are getting more experience with earthquakes than we’d like, so it’s a good time to make sure that we’re prepared. From my experience, knowing that you’re prepared is a very good way to help with the anxiety associated with having no control over what the earth decides to throw at us. What we learnt in Christchurch is that the worst can happen, and it’s too late once it’s happened to wish you’d been more prepared. So what follows is some advice from someone who’s been there. I realise some of you have seen this before but it doesn’t hurt for us all to have a reminder.

Have a plan

• I can’t stress how important it is to have a plan – you must know exactly where you are going to meet, who is going to pick up children, where you will go if you can’t get to your house.
• If the big one strikes the reality is you won’t have any way to communicate as phones will be out, you may not be able to walk due to damage so you need to have a local backup plan if you can’t get home.  I could hardly get up the street due to liquefaction, power lines down, hidden sink holes – I ended up getting a ride on the back of a Parks tow truck as the road became impassable.  It took me 2.5 hours to get about 3 kms and it was a further 2 days before we could get to our badly damaged house.  You must assume you won’t have any mobile coverage so the plan must be fully in place before the event.  You must also assume you won’t have your car – broken buildings and slips block roads.
• Consider a Facebook page as part of your plan – it was the quickest and most reliable way to get information out to a lot of people. Texts/calls didn’t work as they are clunky compared to putting a post on Facebook. Facebook was our lifeline in Christchurch

Supplies that you should have in bulk

• Water, water and more water. Don’t underestimate how much you will need, and you need to be prepared to rough it on your own for at least 3 days. You may also need to share with neighbours or refugees who end up at your house. So if you have room for it don’t hold back, you will use it. Even once tankers get it, it has to be boiled and without power that is a mission.
• Spare 9kg gas bottles. We now have two – one on the barbeque and one in storage. A barbeque gives you the opportunity to cook, and eat your freezer which will otherwise be wasted with no power.
• Gas cooker for boiling water and heating canned food, and once again, lots of gas for it

Emergency Kit

• Keep your kit in big plastic bins that you can pick up and put in the back of the car if you need to leave your house. You need to be self-sustaining wherever you are and that includes if you are out and there is another event and you can’t get back home
• Think carefully about where you store your emergency kit. Will you be able to get to it?
• Invest in a wind up radio/torch but make sure you’ve worked out how to use it (unlike us who fumbled around in the dark and didn’t realise it had an aerial – our arms got very sore after an hour of holding it up in the air). Batteries are a bit hopeless unless you change them regularly
• Have food, but keep in mind you will probably still be able to access the pantry. More importantly, make sure you have a stash of things you may not be able to get after a quake – batteries, pet food, medication, first aid kit
• A car phone charger
• Masks if you live in an area prone to liquefaction (it stinks when it’s wet and it blows in the wind when dry)
• 20L containers for collecting water from water stations (as least 2, one for collecting water and one for boiled sterile water).  Boiling water for 2 months became a big part of our lives so it was important to have a good system in place
• A jam making pan or really big pot with lid for boiling water (it needs to be efficient as you might be boiling with your precious gas)
• A tent might sound silly but in our suburb there were about 50 families that ended up living in a tent city on the school grounds.  Most were there for between one and two weeks.  Most had lost their homes but some were there because their children wouldn’t go back into the house
• Analogue phone (if you don’t have power this is very useful)
• Heaps of wet wipes for washing.  Camping showers were great
• Headlamps – very handy if having to visit a port-a-loo or your own creation at night
• Water purification drops

 

Other things we have learnt to do at home

• Decide on your drop, cover hold place – it must be close and easy to get to and not near windows or stuff that can fall on you.  Think about cupboards – our spare room cupboard was used for storage and in both quakes it all literally flew out onto the bed.  Keep a clear path to your safe place.  If you are crawling, what can fall on you (eg TV), what will you crash into (I had an altercation with an oil column heater in September)?
• Keep a torch beside your bed. Nothing better than knowing you have light when the power is out and everything is broken
• Keep a pair of shoes near your bed to save your feet if you have to walk over broken items
• Put your glasses in a drawer or in their case as you can guarantee they won’t be where you left them after the shaking stops
• Charge your phone up every night
• Always keep half a tank of fuel in the car
• Have a stash of cash hidden away – no power therefore no eftpos
• Have you got a way of collecting rain water?  We all removed our downpipes and collected the water for washing, etc.  Big plastic garbage bins are good.  It was also useful for watering the veges as we had water restrictions for many months after the quake
• a plan for an outdoor toilet (what will you make it from, where will you put it?).  We couldn’t rely on port-a-loos being in the right places
• gloves and lots of plastic bags (depending on your toilet design you may need them)
• Quake safe your home.  You can buy this wonderful anti-slip mat from most $2 shops.  We lined our pantry with it after September and it worked a treat in February.  You can also buy a product called museum wax to put under your precious ornaments.  Not sure how well it works because we’re too scared to put our stuff back out, but we have some for when we do

Useful things to consider at work

• Have a plan – where are you going to do drop, cover and hold – can you fit under your desk. If not, clear some space!
• Even if furniture is secured, it may only hold it in place long enough for you to get out of its way, so keep away from any objects that could hurt you.  I know someone who had the photocopier come right through the wall into their office.
• Keep an old pair of walking shoes under your desk in case you have to walk home
• Keep details of how to access your emails from home, at home
• Consider putting together a grab bag under your desk. If you had to walk home, what would you need, what might others need eg water, survival blanket, first aid, hard hat
• When you leave the building assume you won’t get back in so take your handbag, phone, keys, laptop and anything else that is important. Sounds basic but in the shock of it all, I left everything important behind.

Insurance

• Don’t rush to put in your EQC claim, you have 3 months. Take the time to establish the damage and see if there are more events.  You don’t want to put in more claims than necessary as it complicates the process for settlement and means you pay more excesses
• After an earthquake take lots of photos of the damage or even if there is no damage.  This is very important if there is a large aftershock that is considered as a new event.  When it comes to apportionment it is important to be able to show what damage was caused by which quake.  This is for both contents and property damage.
• Consider your insurance policy – how have they performed in Christchurch?  For more information see http://insurancewatch.org.nz/
• Ensure you have full cover for your house. Don’t rely on Insurance Company calculators or think about the value in terms of what you think the registered value of your house is
• What does your insurance cover you for?  If you have to leave your home due to damage how much cover is there?  Ours was poor, only $10,000 (this was gone before we had even managed to get emergency repairs done so that we could move into it), others had 6 months, 1 year or $30,000 cover
• How does your insurance company cover carpets – contents or part of your house policy?  In a rental this is important because if you don’t have chattels or contents insurance will your carpets be covered if they are damaged which many were – hot water cylinders, fridge and cupboard contents (there was no water at our badly damaged house for 5 months so the food just sat on the carpet).
• If you have a rental what kind of cover do you have for loss of rental ie the house is unliveable?
• If you have retaining walls check your policy and EQC’s carefully.  EQC only covers indemnity and within a certain area of your house.
• If you happen to have something like a fresh water spring on your property – who covers it if it decides to pop up somewhere else (like the middle of your driveway)?

One other really important thing to remember is to look after each other. Everyone reacts differently to these events and individuals can swing backs and forwards between feeling very positive to very anxious.

Even six years down the track, I still have days where it feels like yesterday. Watching what Kaikoura and Hurunui are going through is particularly difficult as I look at their faces on the TV and understand immediately all the feelings and emotions they are going through.

Children are especially vulnerable and I think Christchurch is just starting to understand the impacts on them.

Allright has lots of resources that were developed after the Canterbury quakes, and a great Facebook page 

Lots going on at the minute!

I worked with Churton Park School on a new site, which launched in February.

Churtonpark.school.nz was redesigned then migrated over to a Google Site.

Initial design and photographs were provided by other students from YooBee School of Design, Wellington.

 

I was a huge fan of King’s X when I was a kid. Their drummer Jerry is in hospital recovering from a heart attack.

The band are taking donations at their website, and for a US$20 donation at the band’s online store at Molken Music you get a free live album, from 1992.

Get well soon Jerry and thanks for the music!