Shaken

New Zealand is in a state of shock right now.  65 casualties, and counting.  This is a small country, where everyone knows everyone else, so everyone has a friend, co-worker or relative living in Christchurch.  University of Otago has a campus there, which is closed.  The airport is closed (although reopening for local flights only today, to help get survivors out and medical help in).  Cell phone services, even here, were slow (and in Christchurch, they were virtually nonexistent).  All the headlines in the newspaper are about the quake, the victims, the heroic attempts to rescue survivors still caught in the wreckage.  It’s like 9/11 all over again, on a smaller scale (smaller country, smaller number of casualties), but this time there is no one to blame. 

I am lucky – my day yesterday was very uneventful.  I only found out about the quake when I answered a Skype call from my Dad frantically asking if I was OK.  I had been out running (or maybe in the shower) at the time the quake hit, and didn’t even feel it.  Many people here in Dunedin did, though.  Eddy said he noticed because he got dizzy and then saw the liquid in the beakers shaking (typical chemist).  My Rotary counselor, Margie, said she actually had to brace herself in the doorway because her building shook so hard.  Dunedin is 360 kilometers (about 200 miles) south of Christchurch, so the people who felt in most were on the higher stories of buildings.  I am thankful my flat seems to be located on a very sound piece of rock.

Although I don’t know anyone in Christchurch, my heart goes out to its residents.  The city has been plagued with aftershocks (this earthquake is even considered an aftershock) since the 7.1 magnitude quake last September.  While New Zealand is used to earthquakes, several residents told me that last September was the first time Christchurch had experienced a major one, and that geologists only recently discovered it is built just a few miles from a fault line.  Now, they have been plagued with them, and their fear is tangible, even down here.  For lack of a better word, everyone here is shaken.  Hopefully I will be able to make myself useful and volunteer to help with some sort of disaster relief, but being so new around here, I don’t really know where to start.  At the very least, it will certainly be interesting to begin studying public health in the wake of this public health disaster.