Don't know whether the silt from liquefaction has the same characteristics as the silt deposited from our floods: in our case, the silt dried out rock hard within a few days, and even heavy rain since then hasn't washed it away in some areas. One riverside park has acquired a new layer of hard dirt on top of the grass, which looks like it will take many months if not years to break down. I can imagine how good that shower felt: it's been so hot here of late we've showered twice a day!
John Coyle Brisbane, Australia -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of David Mann Sent: Monday, 28 February 2011 7:13 PM To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List Subject: Re: Photos from my neighbourhood in Christchurch On Feb 28, 2011, at 2:00 AM, frank theriault wrote: > Your photos very effectively show the damage to your house and > neighbourhood. Thank goodness you all escaped without injury. I would have been a lot safer if I'd been at home at the time :) > That must have been one scary moment (or moments). I was thinking a bit more about it this afternoon. It's probably the second holy-shit scary moment I've had during the past few months. The other was a guy in a 4WD who decided to pass a truck while I was coming the other way on my road bike. If you count September 4th it'd be the third big scare in 6 months but to be honest I wasn't truly fearing for my life during that. But life on the edge is taking some getting used to ;) One of the things I will never forget from last Tuesday was the look on the faces of the people around me. They were quietly scared out of their minds. And I may as well have been looking in a mirror. It looks like I'll be "at work" again in the next couple of days. It seems that some business owners have been allowed through the cordon and our work computers have been retrieved. I'll be working at home again until we find some alternative premises. Considering the state of the roads it's best that we're not commuting anyway. I'd much rather keep the roads free for emergency vehicles. I spent today in a small town called Methven, about 90 minutes southwest of here. Janet had some consulting to do at a company down there and invited me along. She dropped me off so I had the day to do whatever I wanted while she worked. There's not a lot to do there so I spent most of the time just walking around enjoying the sights, but she did ask me to see if I could find a grave of one of her distant relatives (she does a lot of family history research). A graveyard is a great place to sit and contemplate life. Anyway, after she'd finished her work we went to visit one of her living relatives... who let me use her shower. Oh bliss. Oh joy. What an enlightening experience, my first real shower in a week. Something that simple was a great lift to my spirits. Then we came home and found that our water has gone out again :( We still have about 15 litres in our emergency container and plenty more available from the filling stations so there's no worry, but it's much more convenient when it comes out of the tap, even if we do have to boil it before use. Another issue coming up is that the silt on the roads from the liquefaction is drying out and the traffic is whipping up a lot of dust. But I think it's meant to rain in the next couple of days. Cheers, Dave -- 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.
