As far as I know, no one I know in Christchurch is dead. The thing is that you just don't know where old uni friends and the like may be. I didn't even know sokky had moved down there till holding_pattern told me she was OK. Mum's cousin, who she's fairly close to and who was at my brother's wedding, was incommunicado for several tense days, but made contact yesterday. Their house is severely damaged so they are living in their campervan, and there is 60cm (2 feet) of liquefaction right across their property. I pretty much went turtle until we heard. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. So today I've been catching up on the earthquake - reading articles, watching videos, looking at pictures. I think this footage from TVNZ in the immediate aftermath pretty much covers it. Don't read the comments if you still have any faith in humanity that you'd like to keep.



If you don't know what liquefaction is, here's a video. If you think they're a bit blase about it all, it's because this was after the September quake, in which there were no fatalities.



Kiwis are pretty hard to keep down, though. Click through to see the photographer's set of pictures from the earthquake on Flickr.



I have other stuff to talk about, but I needed to post this first.

ETA: Picture galleries at stuff.co.nz