Shaker...

[wellywood]

No. Not a style of furniture. We had a 6.2 quake around 4.00 pm. I rushed out to the shop after everything stopped moving to check all was OK. The only thing that had come off its hook on the wall was a steel builders square that left a nice gouge in the floor - otherwise all good.
I hope the other NZ members are fine and didn't suffer damage.

 

[MMUK]

At least your square wasn't damaged

 

[Grahamshed]

Thats not a lot of fun. Do you get many of them there ?

 

[cambournepete]

I didn't feel a thing in Christchurch.

There have been over 100 aftershocks since 4pm (it's now 11:30).

Here's one place to look: http://canterburyquakelive.co.nz/Last24HoursNewZealand/

 

[wellywood]

Thats not a lot of fun. Do you get many of them there ?

Oddly enough Graham, I was watching QI a few weeks ago when they said that the UK has the highest incidence of quakes (in the world?). They are so small though that they're not felt and only register on seismographs.

We get them regularly here (NZ is often known as 'The Shaky Isles') and they are usually strong enough to rattle the china and make the light fittings sway. Todays made the house shake and knocked some loose items off the walls. You can often hear them coming - they sound like a large truck approaching. :shock:

 

[mseries]

Yikes. I remember two tremours when i was in NZ in 1990. One, I was in a backpackers hostel in Wellington, in a room on my own and in the wardrope was nothing but some wire coat hangers. I was awaken by them rattling !!!!. WTF was that ? Oh, probably just a tremour. This was my second experience of a tremour in NZ so I wasn't too phased. The first was a few months earlier and I was in Whanganui at a persons house. I was feeling queezy with a leg injury, I was in the home of an A&E nurse who took me home to look after me for the weekend. I was sat on the sofa watching the Ranfurly Cup on TV and my host was tidying the garden. Their home was a large prefab. movable one, I felt it move in my stomach, like I was starting to be sick like when you crest a hump backed bridge in a car. I put my hands on the sofa to feel if it was moving as I wasn't sure if I was just being queezy or not. Later I was in the garden chatting to my host and he introduced me to his neighbour. "Did you feel the earth move ?" he said. "At about 3:15 ?" I replied, "Yes" he said. "Yes" I said.

 

[mind_the_goat]

I was in the home of an A&E nurse who took me home to look after me for the weekend.

The NHS just can't compete can it

 

[mseries]

I was in the home of an A&E nurse who took me home to look after me for the weekend.

The NHS just can't compete can it

it gets better,

I was travelling by bicycle and had burned my leg a few days earlier on a pot belly stove, it wasn't showing any signs of healing so I paid a visit to A&E in Wanganui on Friday afternoon. I'd made a detour especially to Wanganui for the hospital as it had showed no real signs of healing in the last three days and I didn't want to leave it any longer. They cleaned and dressed my wound and told me to come back on Sunday. I said I was travelling and didn't really want to hang around for two or three days - I had yet to look for somewhere to stay that night and I was heading to Wellington then the South Island. Ali, who ended up taking me home, wasn't treating me but overheard the conversation and came in and said "If you stay with me over the weekend, I'll bring you back down on Sunday and my husband will drive you to Wellington on Monday". She made a -phone call and then we went to her home during her break. She told me in the car that she was unable to contact her husband but she'd drop me at home anyway. I thought this might be a tricky situation; her husband coming home and finding a stanger there. Ali assured me he'd be OK, she said he's a sales rep. and often brings young travellers home with him. Anyway as we arrived at their house Sean was jsut arriving so Ali dropped me off and Sean took me to the car wash and the supermarket with him, his normal Friday evening errands. Next day was the earthquake day, Sunday afternoon their sons took me out drinking to their rowing club after Ali had taken me to work with her. At the hospital they called A&E in Wellington and told them to expect me on Tuesday !! On Monday Sean drove me and my bike to Wellington via three or four furniture shops where he did his business and dropped me at a backpackers hostel after buying me fish and chips !. Tuesday I go to A&E, they dressed my wound again and gave me a big bag of dressings and saline so I could look after it myself.

None of this cost me a penny, I am so grateful to those people, we've lost touch but I love retelling the story, my first taste of the famous Kiwi hospitality.

 

[No skills]

That's amazing, whys life not like that most of the time

If any of the local nurses here offered to take me home with them I'd run a mile, broken legs or not :shock: :lol:

 

[wellywood]

mseries it's nice to know you have good memories of NZ (despite burning your leg). When you live here, the general friendliness is often overlooked. I guess it's because we are so small - just 4.5 million - that we tend to pull together. I know that if I park the car at the side of road somewhere remote, the first vehicle that comes along will stop and ask if everything's OK.

 

[mseries]

mseries it's nice to know you have good memories of NZ (despite burning your leg). When you live here, the general friendliness is often overlooked. I guess it's because we are so small - just 4.5 million - that we tend to pull together. I know that if I park the car at the side of road somewhere remote, the first vehicle that comes along will stop and ask if everything's OK.

I have so many great memories of New Zealand, Travelling by bike and as on my second trip hitch hiking I met so many local people in their own environments, small towns away from the tourist destinations, ordinary people going about their business. I also stayed with a couple in Auckland whom i'd met in Hawaii. They took me in like a member of the family, showed me where the spare key was kept when they went to work, took me sailing on their yacht.