Share your earthquake experience | Canterbury News | Local News in Canterbury

Tell us your experience of the earthquake at star.reporters@starcanterbury.co.nz

Nick Hight, 14, tells his story:
My eyes flashed open and I embraced the dull void of the night. For several moments, awareness struggled to seep into my mind, and I lay still in my bed. A strange feeling of emptiness seemed to fill the house.

Then suddenly, I realised what was occurring. The house was shaking. A violent wind rocked it from side to side only, after another handful of seconds, when the shaking did not stop, I realised it wasn't the wind. It was an earthquake.

Safety procedures flooded into my brain, and I had a sudden compulsion to jump from my bed and scramble under it. But I didn't. I couldn't. Something gripped me against the bed, not fear, but anxiety, perhaps. Anxiety of what would happen next. A subconscious decision told me to try to wait it out, to remain where I was, in a possibly vulnerable position, until it ended.

My brain overloaded with thoughts, and the sounds of destruction: the sound of a constant low rumble, of continuous clattering and shattering, of crashing and breaking, and of the dull thuds of items being displaced and plummeting to the carpeted floor. Books were thrown from their places on the bookshelves and free-standing photo frames flipped forward on the hard wood of my desk.

Then I heard a voice call out from downstairs, "Power's out!" Strangely, it seemed that my digital alarm clock flickered off after I heard the voice, and I looked over to it to catch the sight of its final moment.

To my surprise, the room appeared to become lighter than before as my eyes adjusted to the dark colours before me in an instant. Curtain-filtered moonlight illuminated the walls and the tumultuous shaking continued. My hands reached across and I clasped the edges of my bed tightly. My eyes darted frantically, but it was, once more, not fear that burned in them. It was exhilaration. Somehow, it was exhilaration.

The quake was like a roller coaster that never stopped. After many more seconds, maybe even half a minute, the tremors finally subsided. I lay shaken in my bed, in more ways than one, and stared at the ceiling. Fortunately, it was still there.

After briefly assessing the damage, my family and I rushed outside in case the house gave in. I stood alone at one end of the driveway, a torch in my hand, and closing my eyes, listened to the wailing burglar alarms that protested at the power outage.

As far as I knew, the entire city of Christchurch was without power. And when an entire city is producing no light, and the morning is still black as death, there is only one thing to do: look up. When I did, I watched the heavens sparkle above me, brighter and fuller than they ever were seen in a city. The whole universe, it seemed, was set out for my viewing. Gradually, the sound of piercing alarms faded, and events of of the past few minutes were set aside, as I was pulled into the enchanting panorama of the night sky.