Happy birthday! Glad to hear things are settling down again. Surprised you're still having aftershocks, but what do I know? Enjoy your time off!
B > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On > Behalf Of David Mann > Sent: 26 September 2010 09:45 > To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List > Subject: Quake: 3 weeks later > > Hi all, > > I have a few spare moments so I thought I might write an update on how > things are going here. I've been quiet lately but for good reasons, things > have been settling down and slowly returning towards normality. > > Last Monday we moved into a temporary office. The building that houses > our usual office sustained a lot of water damage after the earthquake > activated the sprinkler system. The boss has been trying to get out of the > lease (for this and other reasons) but it looks like they'll have it ready for use > soon, possibly this coming week. > > The temporary office space is working fairly well, except for the distractions > of having everyone together in the same room. The only major annoyance is > the IT situation; our main office server is still in its temporary location and it's > very slow to access files over the VPN connection. > > We are still getting aftershocks. The biggest ones are about magnitude 4.5 > and we'd be getting maybe one or two of those a day with a handful of > smaller ones, mostly around 3.5. The scientists say that the aftershocks are > mostly generated at each end of the main fault, and one end is > uncomfortably close to the city. I don't know how accurate the location data > is, but when I put the coordinates into Google Maps it sometimes shows the > location directly under people's houses in the outer suburbs! The shakes > don't worry me so much now but the noise that precedes them still gets the > adrenalin running. The sound is hard to describe, it's a bit like thunder. > > We haven't heard anything from the insurers yet. They have tens of > thousands of claims to process and a broken chimney isn't going to be high > on the priority list so we're expecting to have to wait a while. There is a silver > lining though, due to the cost of repairing or replacing chimneys we are likely > to qualify for an energy efficient heat pump as a replacement. > > You may find the insurance situation for natural disasters to be interesting. > The first $100,000 (+tax) of damage to houses is covered by the government- > run Earthquake Commission (EQC), plus another $20,000 for personal effects. > That wouldn't even cover half the value of most houses, so private insurance > will cover any shortfall if the damage is bad enough. I don't remember the > current estimate of total damage across the city, it's a few billion dollars > which really isn't too bad when you consider what it could have been. > > I've taken tomorrow (Monday) off as it's my birthday. I also thought a four > day weekend would be nice :) We've had stunning weather over the past > few days, and I got to meet adventurer extraordinaire Steve Gurney at an > outdoors expo. I bought a copy of his autobiography because he said he'd > sign it. He's turned to coaching and motivational speaking now and the > bastard has got me thinking about goals again. I mean that in the nicest > possible way, I have tremendous respect for him and I do need a kick in the > pants from time to time. > > Cheers, > > Dave > > David Mann > [email protected] > http://www.multisport.net.nz/ > skype: multisport.net.nz > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and > follow the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
