Quake!

Alright, I just just got back and am typing this amidst aftershocks. It seems like most people have heard this, but just in case you haven't Christchurch got hit by a 7.4 earthquake early this morning. I was not in the city yet, but 3 hours away in Wanaka. I woke up to my bed rattling, but assumed it was just the guy below me rolling around(I really, really am not aware of ANYTHING when I just wake up) and went back to sleep. Only to wake up at 7:00 to text from everyone wanted to know if we were effected by the 7.4 quake. Well, that certainly woke me up. Katelyn and I ran up to the TV lounge to try and find out what was going on. It took a bit before we finally found the tiniest scrape of information. Just that indeed, there was a 7.4 quake, power was out, so were water and sewer lines and a few shots of piles of rubble. Oh boy, unsure whether or not even if we would have a bus to catch, we continued to repack and then head down to the I-site to hopefully catch the bus.

Thankfully, the bus did show up. We were given a warning at the beginning that the driver wasn't quite sure what was going on, and hopefully when we switched drivers we would have more information. By lunch time I had talked to my flatmates who told me everything was fine, but they had just gotten power back. We were able to catch a bit of the news at one stop and found out that Christchurch had been declared a state of emergency and the city center was evacuated. But when we switched drivers we were still on the 'ok' to keep going. During the afternoon I found out that my grocery store's roof collapsed, and that Uni was closed for a week. One bad, one excellent bit of news.

Finally, seven hours later, we arrived in Chch.  I saw some damage to a nearby church, but nothing major or exciting(or even picture worthy, drat). I'm back in my flat now, exhausted, out of food, but so incredibly happy to be back and to have everyone safe. It sounds like we'll be spending the next few days riding out the aftershocks, which so far have been a bit terrifying. I'm used to tornadoes as my local natural disaster, you know, those things they can normally predict at least somewhat? These aftershocks are random, and scary, I can only imagine how terrifying it must have been during the actual earthquake.