Prequel

September 4th 2010- the beginning of the end. September 30th 2019- the end of the beginning.

After 9 years I am ready to rebuild my quake damaged home. In the intervening years it has deteriorated and in spite of wanting to fix it, I know the best option is to demolish and start again. I've been watching the floor levels gradually plummet, been hearing the doors rattle in a good storm, been smelling the mould and been saying goodbye as the old girl gives up.
Like all of us who were asleep and unsuspecting, I was jolted upright at 4:35 am on Saturday nine years ago. There was a deafening roar like a train screaming through the bedroom. I yelled at my son, Kahu, to get under the bed but my voice was lost in the thunder. The Greendale Fault was jolting into life.
The house rocked and rolled for an interminable 45 seconds. Chaos. Solid objects flew across the hallway and off the shelves. Glass panes creaked and groaned in wooden frames. The earth roared underneath us. Silence. I called to Kahu and his friend Jaspar, eight years old. The frost was settling so we piled into my bed to wait for daybreak. Kahu shaking like a leaf and Jaspar needing to go to the loo. "Guess we won't be at school on Monday." I tried to cheer them and myself up.
The sun peered cautiously over the horizon so we rolled out of bed to crunch and tiptoe over broken trinkets and the remains of the plate cupboard. I locked the cat door so Pierre, our cat, couldn't come in. Like many of his kind, he had gone to ground. In pyjamas the three of us piled into the MG. Electricity was off and I needed a cup of tea. I also needed to get Jaspar home.

September 4, 4:35 am, magnitude 7.1, epicentre near Darfield, depth 10 km.
February 22, 12:51 pm, magnitude 6.3, epicentre 6.7 km south east of Christchurch, depth 5km. In the ten minutes after it hit there were 10 aftershocks of magnitude 4 or more.

Devastation in the central city as buildings collapsed. Upstairs in the English block at Papanui High School we were tossed around like a load of washing. Apologies to the Year 10 boys I had in lunchtime detention for not completing their poetry anthologies. They are my earthquake kids. When I finally got home I was biking through water. And slithering over liquefaction on my driveway, knee deep. A stream gushed up from under the house and the back garden flooded. Water streamed for another five hours but the driveway sloped towards the street.
I waited. Where was Kahu, Becky, Aiuki? They straggled home, it was relief for everyone to reunite. We ate with the neighbours, huddled together in shock. Food and TV as we attempted to pull ourselves together. The news filled in the gaps but drew us into the city's trauma. Sirens wailed into the night, helicopters whirred, rescue attempts succeeded and failed.