Hi All I though you might like to hear our member Steve Rooke is a survivor in Christchurch. This just received from him. Alan G3NYK
----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve Rooke" <[email protected]> To: "Alan Melia" <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2011 6:55 AM Subject: Re: your 'quake > Hi Alan, > > How's things with you? Well, it's pretty grim here, old man. My Mum > and myself are OK and our houses are in pretty good shape but we both > had extensive damage to the internal items. I have now come to stay > with Mum temporarily and we have cleaned up the mess here so it is > habitable. The inside of my house is completely trashed and I'll go > back there to tackle it once things are stable enough to leave Mum on > here own. Up until now we have not had water, sewerage, power and > telephone services but the phone services have just been connected so > I'm sending this via dial-up from my laptop running, for the moment, > on battery power. The have no idea when the other services will be > fixed and it could take weeks or even months. The roads around the > place are totally wrecked with large cracks, bumps and sink holes with > many of those which have swallowed large parts of cars and trucks > which have driven into them. In addition there is a thick covering of > liquefaction silt on the roads. Driving around here is very hazardous > and really to be avoided unless completely necessary. The Central > Business District has been very badly hit with every second building > destroyed. It happened at 12:51pm on tuesday so many people were in > those buildings working and there have been dozens of deaths. So far > the official figure is 75 but that is ONLY the account of those bodies > that have been identified, there are many more that have been > recovered, many still lie dead on the streets and literally hundreds > buried in completely collapsed buildings that had caught on fire and > are really expected to be dead. A state of National Emergency has been > called and this is the first time that has happened in the history of > New Zealand as this is the worst disaster in our time. All we can do > is listen to the radio running on batteries and cope with torches > until those batteries run out. The news coming continuously over the > radio... > > This just over the radio, the power company have just said that their > infrastructure in this area of town is so badly damaged in the ground > that they are likely to abandon it and put in a new overhead feed in > it's place so that means it could take some considerable time. > > You see it is the suburbs to the east of the city, were we are, that > have been the most hit. The quake was just 6.3 but was centred much > closer to the city and much shallower too so that is why it has caused > an order of magnitude worse damage than the 7.1 one back in September. > I managed to get some water today by walking to a school nearby which > has a well-head that is overflowing. I had to walk through the water > around it and collect the overflowing water into plastic bottles. I > hope it continues to flow as water here is not easy to get. I tried to > get food and petrol today but the petrol stations nearby were closed > and so were the shops... > > My battery said I had 3h left but it just cut out on me but I'm up on > a generator that we bought today over the other side of the town. Had > to queue for ages to get petrol for the car and the generator. Have > the TV going now and can see some of the carnage finally. We only have > 1.2kVA so not enough to drive everything bar the simplest things. I > brought up the ADSL router but there is no connection so I guess NZ > Telecom is not running at full capacity yet, so I'm still doing this > on dial-up. > > Leave it at that for now. > > Kind regards, > Steve > PS. forward this around. > > On 24/02/2011, Alan Melia <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi Steve hope you and friends/ family are OK....we are all thinking of you, > > and the devastation to that beautiful city. > > > > Alan > > G3NYK > > > > > > > -- > Steve Rooke - ZL3TUV & G8KVD > The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. > - Einstein _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
