COMMENT: When the glass seems half shaken …

NBR's Christchurch correspondent, Chris Hutching, explains why leaving the city couldn't be further from his mind:

Despite the impressions from television coverage, Christchurch people are not universally miserable or seeking a bolt hole.

Yesterday the sun shone, and neighbours came out with their wheelbarrows and shovels and shared tales. Not that there’s any rush to move the grey stuff, although it makes us feel better to do something. When it’s wet, liquefaction is very heavy, like jelly. It’s much easier to move when it’s dried out a bit.

It’s hard to get any normal work done with so many people dropping in to offer help or have a chinwag.

I’ve just had a visit from a friend who lives on Avonside Drive. She laughed when I showed her the widening cracks in the ceiling and I felt a bit silly. Her house is falling apart, her section fractured, and they have no power or water. She headed off with a smile to help others who need it more.

Which is not to belittle at all the genuine trauma experienced by many citizens. Nor is it to belittle the hassles of more potholes, grit and water everywhere.

But in the usual way, television cameras are adept at rushing to disasters when emotions are high and everyone is frantically trying to reach out to family and friends.

Finish off the old dungers
These two latest earthquakes are finishing off the job started on February 22. As the new chief of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority, Roger Sutton, highlighted today, it should speed up the demolitions.

It may also quash the fixations of heritage aficionados who were preparing to devote hundreds of man hours to repairing decrepit and dangerous old “dungers”, in the words of Gerry Brownlee (just let them go, turn the Anglican Cathedral into a museum site, I say).

[Similarly, a common theme on Twitter is Christchurch residents hoping their home or office is now damaged enough to make EQC or insurance claims an open-and-shut case - Editor].

Leaving couldn't be further from my mind
Work colleagues ask how much longer I can stay here.

Getting out of my home town couldn't be further from my mind. I love this place - the hills with their falling boulders, the beaches and rivers, my family (90 year old Dad at New Brighton refuses to budge), friends, great neighbours, my boat at Purau.

I'm looking forward to posting some good articles today and getting down to the pub later to swap stories with mates.

I tell my workmates in Auckland that their volcanoes are coming to an address near them.

A life more interesting
Disasters actually make life pretty interesting, if a little psychologically testing when they keep coming. Understandably, some of our friends are becoming a little more paranoid.

And what was it like Monday? The first one around 1pm was a cracker. I was in the front yard, couldn’t move, just watched our old villa rocking and rolling.

My daughter hopped under the kitchen table. Then I saw the water start to bubble up through my newly sown front lawn. A bunch of little springs that ran clear at first.

Journalistic instinct took over and I headed off on my mountain bike with camera and cellphone again, first to Avonside, which is a good barometer of quake strength.

I was chatting to a family friend on the footpath when the second one hit. It was truly amazing, very scary and one of the most violent I’ve felt. “Old Bucky” (to coin the name my writer friend Jane Bowron uses in her columns) tried to kick my legs out. I fell against a wire fence and held on. My friend seized my bike and we both held on until the lamp posts stopped waving (should be good fuel for her next novel).

Then the water and grey stuff really starting streaming up out of the earth.

Heartbreak for small businesses
There was heartbreak for many small businesses facing another clean up. The main potential disaster scene in the city was in Stanmore Road where a damaged block of shops fell. Other damaged buildings within the central city cordon were felled. The greatest personal disasters were in the hillside suburbs, around the Avon River, and the coastal properties of Bexley, which must surely be abandoned in any rebuilding programme.

So life goes on. We’re all awaiting the big property report that will determine which areas are abandoned and the levels of compensation.

Meanwhile, I’m sure there’s real potential for earthquake tourism. But I think civic authorities might not be enthusiastic. And of course there are all those people who go on about “rubberneckers” (as if they’re not interested in other people’s disasters).