Amazing photo

Well I think it's amazing.

The earthquake in Christchurch dislodged a car-sized boulder near Lyttleton. You can follow its path as it rolled across the lawn and then smashed straight through the house.

Photo: AAP ninemsn.com.au

And here it is, the other side of the house it destroyed.

Photo: AAP ninemsn.com.au

Her fate?

Yesterday I posted a link to a mobile phone conversation between a woman trapped under her desk in a collapsed office building in Christchurch and a tv station.

She said she had not had contact with rescuers.

What happened?

Late yesterday rescuers pulled her out alive with broken ribs and cuts. She is recovering in hospital.

Ms Vos said she had plenty of time trapped under four-storeys of rubble to reassess her priorities in life - if she made it out alive.

''Like not worrying about stupid things like: 'Oh my god, where's my bag?','' she said. ''What does that matter? They are things you can replace later. You can't replace people.''

The randomness of death, injury, escape in disasters always intrigues me.

There are amazing stories of missing death by seconds or centimetres and while some people are being rescued the death toll now stands at a confirmed ninety eight. Very sadly babies are amongst the dead, which I always think is somehow the saddest thing. One of just five months old and another nine months old are amongst the confirmed dead.

Over two hundred people are still missing and the rescue services say hope of finding any more survivors is almost zero.  They've had no sounds or signs of life in over twenty-four hours.




The report is here.

Listen to this

TV Channel 9 here in Oz has broadcast an amazing interview over her mobile phone with an Aussie woman trapped in her Christchurch office building after today's earthquake.

I've said many times before during major disasters that they're actually not one event but a jigsaw of individual, very personal stories.

This is another example of that.

She sounds calm but she must be terrified.

Listen here: "I'm trapped under a desk, I can't get out, it's dark, I'm bleeding, and I just don't what's going on out there".

Ánd by the way, it's a side of mobile phones, often so annoying and cause for complaint, that we don't think about.  Try to imagine the comfort of it to someone like this, trapped in the dark, not knowing what's out there, what's going on, what her situation really is. She at least has contact with a friendly voice, feels that she's not alone.



Another example of a very personal story that was part of a much larger jigsaw - and another showing the value and comfort of a mobile phone in these disastrous situations - that still raises the hair on the back of my neck whenever I listen to it was during the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria. It was a real time audio of one person trapped right in the middle of it, facing a terrifying death.


Rhiannon, only twenty years old, called radio station 3AW as the fires raced towards the house where she and a group had taken shelter.

Happy news, but then...

The day in this region started off on a happy note, with the simultaneous arrival in Sydney Harbour of the luxury ocean liners
Queen Mary 2 and the Queen Elizabeth.

It must have been some sight and I'd have liked to have seen it - too early for me to be there though, not being a morning person.

Photo: AP Sydney Morning Herald

The harbour was full of leisure boats to welcome the liners and the foreshores were full of people wanting to see and welcome the two monster ships.

A typical happy and pleasant morning in Sydney.

But then later in the morning we started getting news of a big earthquake in New Zealand, which hit Christchurch city centre at lunchtime. The worst possible time, the city centre full of workers, shoppers and sightseers.

It's still chaotic and news is being updated, and getting worse, by the minute. There are many dead, sixty-five so far confirmed, and inevitably there will be more casualties found as rescue teams search the rubble. Numerous people are reported trapped.

Photo: ninemsn.com.au

Buildings have collapsed, especially the historic old ones. The beautiful Christchurch Cathedral has been badly damaged, the spire has crashed into the street and there's rubble all around the building. 

Two crowded buses have been crushed by falling buildings as have cars with people in them.

Photo: Getty Images ninemsn.com.au

The city doesn't have enough ambulances to cope and residents from the outer suburbs are driving into the centre to help rescue people and take them to triage centres in their private vehicles. 

An eyewitness on radio as I'm typing is talking about being able to smell smoke from fires and having seen broken water mains flooding roads. He says the roads are corrugated and overall infrastructure damage is huge.