Tuesday, 07 September 2010
WHAKATANE bodybuilder Marty Niao was thrown out of bed by the Christchurch earthquake.
Mr Niao, a director of Peace Street fitness centre Sunny Gymz, had travelled to Christchurch to judge the South Island bodybuilding championships with fiancé Sian McEwan, Gary and Marina Fowell, and Paul Burke. Mr Fowell was to compete in the event.
“There was no warning. All at once it started and I was thrown out of bed,” said Mr Niao, who also competes as a bodybuilder.
“We were in a three-level apartment building and the beds were on the third floor. I grabbed hold of Sian. It was a decent-sized jolt.”
A pharmacy building 30 metres from their motel collapsed.
Mrs Fowell said the group huddled in doorways when the 4.35am quake, measuring 7.1, struck. The motel building was eight blocks from the centre of Christchurch.
“We didn’t know it was that severe until we called home,” Mrs Fowell said.
The power was off and without television or a radio to refer to, the extent of damage was not immediately apparent. They learned from friends and family in the Eastern Bay, who were listening to news broadcasts, about its size and the damage it caused.
“It was a big one but we didn’t think it was as big as Edgecumbe at the time,” Mrs Fowell said.
The bodybuilding championship was cancelled because of damage to the Canterbury University venue and lack of power and water but, because of the circumstances, organisers gave all entrants automatic entry to the nationals.
Mrs Fowell said the damage seemed confined to brick buildings. Lots of red brick walls and seemingly every brick chimney had collapsed. Water was bubbling up through the ground and there were cracks in roads.
“There were piles of bricks everywhere,” she said.
The continual aftershocks were unsettling but the magnitude 6.3 Edgecumbe quake that struck at 1.42pm on March 2, 1987, was “scarier”. There was no power for the entire night after that event, Mrs Fowell said.
Mr Fowell, a builder, said most modern buildings appeared to have withstood the quake; it was the older ones that succumbed.
“They just let go.”
Many of the damaged buildings he saw would have to be demolished and replaced with new ones. On top of the huge rebuilding task, repairing water and sewerage infrastructure would be a major exercise, he said.
Mr Fowell said the Edgecumbe quake felt sharper and more powerful. “This one was more long, slow and menacing.”
Miss McEwan said she was jolted awake but could see nothing because the power went off immediately. No one was able to sleep again.
“We started texting people at home to find out what the damage was like elsewhere.”
Saturday was spent walking around trying to buy food and keeping a lookout for opportunities to use a toilet.
“We were lucky we had bought our own bottled water with us,” she said.
Whakatane resident Mereana O’Connell travelled to Christchurch on Friday for a family reunion.
She said at first she thought the quake was a dream. She found it was so strong she could not stand properly and it went on for “a long time”.
“It was really scary because we couldn’t see anything and we were in a place we didn’t know. It still feels like the ground’s shaking when I’m standing still.”
She was in a hotel about an eight-minute drive east of central Christchurch. She went to visit a house she once owned in the city and it appeared to have “sunk”. No one was home and it was marked a “no-go area”.
She said she was lucky to have had seats booked for her return flight on Sunday. Christchurch Airport had been chaotic.