Hi everyone, thank you all for your thoughts and prayers, yes we are all fine thank goodness but what an ordeal!! We live only a few miles from where the quake took place, I shall write some of what happened to us here. We feel so blessed to have come through all this unscathed! Well that is apart from two bruised shoulders I have from being thrown from side to side down our hall way as I tried desperately to reach my front door, hands cut from broken glass as I crawled along the floor as it was impossible to stand up, and a purple knee from being thrown down the two steps to my front door onto a concrete floor, the force was so strong. This was all in the pitch black! I could not open my front door as I was being thrown all over the place, I could only manage to stay upright on my knees! When finally I got the door open I thought I could run outside onto the lawn, how wrong I was, I found the ground was moving so much I could not stand upright at all!! I skidded and slipped on the ice on my front porch and fell onto the lawn, the night was freezing and we still had a layer of snow on our lawn from the day before, so I found myself sitting in the frozen snow with my bare bum on the snow only wearing a cotton night shirt!! But I was free from the shaking house!!!! The sound was like a train crashing into our house, only minor cracks in our home though and a small crack on our brick fire place inside, and the chicken house is leaning over, we had many things inside the house break, glasses lamps pictures ornaments 4 vases my sculpures and DH Grandfather clock was smashed! The stone tower of our beautiful church came down and parts went through the roof. It is 100 years old next year!
We had no power for 12 hours, my brother further up into the hills still has no power, we have to boil our water as the pump station up the river has failed, but we still have water being in a rural area. My daughter in CHCH has no sewage or water, niether has another brother in Lyttleton, one of my sisters has lost three brick chimnies on her old homestead. We have had many after shocks which have been around 4 or 5 on the RS and our house being wooden has shaken with every one of them! They said we may feel these for up to two or three weeks!
Can' wait to get quilting again but for tonight we are bracing ourselves for gale force winds and heavy rain !
Thanks once again for all your kind thoughts!
Gal