Earthquake brain - much like nappy brain, only it's you whpo wakes up screaming.

Hi everyone. Long time no see :-) Like most Cantabrians, I haven't had a good night's sleep since the earthquakes began last September, and (unlike others) my computer keyboard is iffy, so excuse the mistakes.

Despite repeated, massive earthquakes I am still alive, and EnvironMenstruals is still going strong. We had another big aftershock 2 weeks ago. Luckily all the high risk buildings were still cordoned off so none of the collapses killed any more people.

I's been a very strange few months since the Earthquake in Christchurch on February 22nd. I've worked for the welfare section of civil defence (our disaster recovery organisation), introduced the local Red Cross to cups (any chance to promote them. lol), and then moved on to do some claims admin work for the government underwriten natural disaster insurer. Soon it will be time to go back to normal life (including writing a thesis, tutoring at university, and running my store)...hopefully it stays normal.

I dropped my laptop in the February quake, when I was thrown off my feet, so getting online has been quite an effort (my cellphone has limited internets, but it's not ideal). I hope I haven't missed much. :-)

We were without power for about 3 or 4 weeks, and running water for even longer, and I still don't have a flushing toilet (although they're promising to have the sewers repaired by this time next month). We're in the depths of a bitterly cold winter (expecting snow tonight, and a 2 week long storm to follow), and many houses in my city are only barely weather-proof. I would say that most of the homes in the more vulnerable, lower socio-economic areas are not adequately weather tight any more. Everyone lost their chimneys in the September quake, so noone has fires for heating now.

We (at civil defense) were on alert on the night of the Japanese earthquake, because of the risk that we'd get a tsunami. That was intense! I was working on compiling a database that would allow us to more effectively help/evacuate the most vulnerable people in harder hit areas if another big quake hit. Suddenly we had to ramp up our work and focus on the coastal suburbs (including where I live), in case we had to evacuate them over night! I went from managing a team of 5 (who'd been working 6 days straight already), to having to find 30 people to start work in the next hour and stay all night if necessary. :afraid:

On the day of the quake, all phone networks were overloaded as people tried to check on loved ones. We had a strange combination of texts/calls not getting through while some texts arrived multiple times. While I tried unsuccessfully to get hold of some of my family I got 1 text from a friend 6 times... telling me how awesome it was to have a cup on days like this (no water/sewerage and a long, muddy walk home from uni).

I'm looking forward to things calming down a bit...maybe I'll get a chance to catch up on what's been happening in teh cup community lately. For now, it's time for me to attempt to go to sleep, otherwise the aftershocks that are bound to happen at 1.30am and 6am won't be able to wake me up.