Thursday night I convene a meeting of Green members in my house. Twelve turn up, one from the eastern suburbs. He is not sure if he can get back or, if not, where he will stay. He has student friends, so he is not worried. He is young, so he is not worried.
We exchange stories before we get down to business. One of us was close to the crushed buses. She went to mount a step but the step kept moving away. In the end she gave up and went back into the street, knowing it was the earthquake-to-end-all.
We agree to set up a tiered communications structure to contact all Canterbury Green members and see how they all are. We fly into action Friday morning. By late afternoon all Ilam members have been contacted, and it produces the first fruit. One member is living inside the cordon with no water, power or sanitation. She needs to live elsewhere. As she cheerfully put it, “it is easier this time, because at least I know my house will be condemned.” Another member is leaving the city and offers her home. I pick our inner city colleague up at the cordon and take her to the Papanui house. They bond and occupancy is exchanged.
I share the concern of another member over the confused messages being circulated to the public about sanitation. Wednesday we are all advised to bury our human waste in the garden. No problem – it’s like camping, at least for a while. But Thursday the message is, if you have water pressure, you may flush your toilets – “use sparingly”. That appears to be an anatomical anomaly but who’s worrying? Well I am. It’s one thing to flush in the western suburbs and confirm that everything is working wonderfully in your section and your street. It’s another to wonder where the glorious product heads. Answer: it heads east. I enquire with Civil Defence. Yes, they reply, most of it will end up in the Avon “but we have to put up with that for a while”. I beg to differ. Surely we can make a distinction between the elderly and infirm, and the able-bodied who can continue with their garden escapades. Maybe, they say, we’ll give that thought. But I then wonder whether there is a sanitation threshold for gardens, if you get my delicate drift. He is not sure. I am not reassured. A strange mixture down here between high professionalism and casual risk-taking.
Minister Brownlee has just assured us on air that liquefaction is not a bad thing. I suppose I know where he is coming from, but I wonder whether our eastern suburb residents agree with him.
I am contacted by a young Green leader who has a small army of 40 volunteers ready to go but not the authorisation to be in the field. I call Sam Johnson, the student leader with an army of maybe 1,000, who has authorised capacity to be in the field. I link them up and Sam has 40 more – 41 if I am allowed to risk my back. I aim to do so.
Bruce Tulloch and I drive through the eastern suburbs and witness the liquefaction. We drive up the Port Hills and witness the damaged houses. We enter one – owned by Bruce’s nephew. Every brick has sheered off the exterior walls. Its front is cracked open from the rest of the house. EQC advice is not to stand in front of it. They show the resilience that you can only admire. We visit the deputy chief of the fire dept. Showing inexhaustible energy through the exhaustion, he tells us of experiences I cannot retell. But the searing story on radio of the two men repairing the organ at Durham St Methodist Church is too much. That was the church I spoke of yesterday – two doors from my office. When I peered into my office window yesterday, I now assume they were lying there still.
It is time for tears, but they do not come.
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.
