Ulster couple relive terror of Christchurch earthquake
A TERRIFIED Ulster couple narrowly cheated death when a massive earthquake rocked their adopted home in New Zealand at the weekend.
Mark McCracken and his wife Geraldine woke to furniture crashing around them as a 7.1 quake ripped through the South Island city of Christchurch on Saturday.
The 32-year-old chef from Comber described how he and his wife fled the bedroom to crouch underneath a table in the living room fearing the roof was going to cave in.
"It felt very, very scary. We were wakened up out of our sleep. Everything was shaking.
"We could hear glasses falling off our shelves and the glass shattering. It was really strange because we were not physically moving but everything else was.
"You could hear all the creaking because these houses are wooden," said Mark. "The bookcase fell and the chest of drawers fell against the bed. The TV fell off too and landed on the floor. The microwave fell off the fridge, it was terrifying.
"We just woke up and heard all this noise. We didn't know what to do?
"We burst into the living room and crouched under the table. Being from Northern Ireland we obviously had never felt anything like that before.
"It only lasted about five seconds but to us it felt like it was going on for hours. We didn't know if another one was coming on or what was going to happen.
"I think it was a 7.1 or 7.2 and then there were several aftershocks at around 5.6 which are big quakes in themselves.
"We were really terrified. It was the scariest thing ever to happen to me as a long as I can remember.
"We didn't know how long it was going to last, whether there was more to come or whether that was the big one. There were a couple of big aftershocks," he said.
"After the quake there were a lot of reports of burst pipes and the council and the government issued warnings. The pressure in our taps was getting less and less. Obviously there must have been a burst pipe so we filled up buckets and whatever we could get our hands on.
"We were not injured and there was no real damage to our home apart from a few cracks in the ceiling and the heat pump is damaged.
"Ours is a bungalow unit but older houses and two storey houses have suffered more damage," he said.
Mark, a chef, said he went to the restaurant where he works and found a considerable amount of damage. "There were a lot of plates and glasses broken," he said, adding that he had spent yesterday tidying up the restaurant.
"We have been here for four years. At the place we were living before there were some small tremors but nothing really moved.
"This was very, very scary. It does really make you think," he said.
He said he and his wife Geraldine, who is from Loughinisland, were inundated with phone calls from concerned family and friends wondering if they were alright.
Mark described how his grandmother, 82-year-old Betty McCracken had been on the phone to him every time she heard there was an aftershock to check and see if he was alright.
"We have spoken to them all and we are safe and well. We are very, very lucky people. We are not injured. It was definitely the fright of our lives.
“Part of the fear was just not knowing what was going to happen next. It was such a violent shake the roof could have caved in and then you don’t know what might have happened,” said Mark.
A top geologist said yesterday that the Christchurch quake had ripped a new 11ft wide fault line in the earth’s surface.
Canterbury University geology professor Mark Quigley said what “looks to us that it could be a new fault” had ripped across the earth and pushed some surface areas up.
At least 500 buildings, including 90 properties, were designated as destroyed in the 7.1-magnitude quake that struck on Friday near the South Island city of 400,000 people.
It is expected that it will take a long time to fully restore some core ser-vices, such as water and sewerage, to parts of the city.
Only two serious injuries were reported from the quake as chimneys and walls of older buildings were reduced to rubble and crumbled to the ground.
New Zealand’s prime minister John Key said it was a miracle no one was killed.
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Weather for Belfast
Tuesday 14 February 2012
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