Earthquake Update - Christchurch - One Year Ago Today
Posted on February 22, 2026
Yes, another earthquake blog. What can I say, really? Over 10,000 aftershocks since September 2010 with the most memorable one of them all on February 22, 2011.
I need to write this blog, my brain saturated with memories and melancholy and inundated recently with images of the past year. The NZ media has been reliving that day in pictures and stories for at least a week now, and it brings it all back to the forefront of the psyche again....in some ways, it's even worse, because there is time to process those pictures in a way that wasn't possible when living it in that moment.
I was chatting with a friend today about the ordeal of getting my two high school boys home from the City Centre. Their school in the middle of the worst of it...How the texts were sporadic and all I really knew after three hours was that they were walking out of the City towards home, but not knowing which direction and with whom they had gone with...I was unable to reach them, the roads being inaccessible across the water. Another friend frantically looked for them, but didn't know where they had been evacuated to. In the end, they were safe...with family friends...but it took me over 24 hours to finally reach them, by bicycle. Then, we walked home through grey streets filled with liquefaction, over torn roads and a tattered bridge to our tattered house.
So a year on, here I am, spilling my guts about one of the most heart wrenching days of my life...and unbelievably grateful to be able to tell it, to be able to hug and hold those closest to me. Tomorrow, there are families and friends of 185 people who cannot do the same for those they lost. Everyone in our City is acutely aware. We share this pain. We all lost our innocence that day and most lost so much more. Kia Kaha Christchurch
I need to write this blog, my brain saturated with memories and melancholy and inundated recently with images of the past year. The NZ media has been reliving that day in pictures and stories for at least a week now, and it brings it all back to the forefront of the psyche again....in some ways, it's even worse, because there is time to process those pictures in a way that wasn't possible when living it in that moment.
I was chatting with a friend today about the ordeal of getting my two high school boys home from the City Centre. Their school in the middle of the worst of it...How the texts were sporadic and all I really knew after three hours was that they were walking out of the City towards home, but not knowing which direction and with whom they had gone with...I was unable to reach them, the roads being inaccessible across the water. Another friend frantically looked for them, but didn't know where they had been evacuated to. In the end, they were safe...with family friends...but it took me over 24 hours to finally reach them, by bicycle. Then, we walked home through grey streets filled with liquefaction, over torn roads and a tattered bridge to our tattered house.
So a year on, here I am, spilling my guts about one of the most heart wrenching days of my life...and unbelievably grateful to be able to tell it, to be able to hug and hold those closest to me. Tomorrow, there are families and friends of 185 people who cannot do the same for those they lost. Everyone in our City is acutely aware. We share this pain. We all lost our innocence that day and most lost so much more. Kia Kaha Christchurch