Christchurch Earthquake

Dom called me early last Saturday morning to inform me that a 7.1 magnitude earthquake hit my 2nd home Christchurh (at 4:30 a.m. NZ time).  I was shocked by the news and quickly called up my brother in Christchurh.  Luckily he was fine.  Not only him, there was no death reported, only 2 person injured.  I guess Christchurch must be blessed by Christ.

Today I chatted with my brother on MSN.  He told me that there were still constant aftershocks occurred almost every hour, and some still have quite high magnitude.  Electricity and water supply were back but it was advised that the water should be boiled before drinking (usually it can be drunk straight from the tap).

The last time I experienced an earthquake was in Christchurch too, almost 15 years ago.  I was sleeping and suddenly I felt like someone was kicking my bed really hard till I got angry and jumped up from my bed.  Only then I realized it was an earthquake.  I can see things shaking, especially the mirror hanging on the wall.  I quickly woke my brothers up and we ran out from the house.  The magnitude was around 6.x that time.  Another time was when I was doing experiment at the engineering lab, suddenly things started shaking, so everyone quickly evacuated from the building.

Even though NZ is such a nice place to live, it does suffer from earthquakes from time to time.  However, as compared to China, the building construction and infrastructure in NZ are much better builded against earthquakes.  If this kind of magnitude happened in China, sure a lot more buildings will collapse and more casualties suffer.

Anyway, thank God!! And please, please don't make all these natural disasters happen so often.