Earthquake - My Thoughts on 'Getting Through'

* My apologies if this has appeared on your blogreaders a million times - I'm having a nightmare with the formatting *

This will be the last post on the earthquake, I know everyone is getting a bit tired of it now but these are some observations I have made that I would like to pass on for those of you that are making sure your emergency kit is up-to-date (that should be everybody!).

We all know about having tinned food, a can opener and bottled water but these are some of the things we are not told about:

Cash - My hubby and I very rarely carry cash and pay for everything by cashflow card. Fortunately hubby had some birthday money still sitting in a drawer so we were ok but with the power out nothing can be paid for with a card = unable to purchase anything.


Plug-in Phone - We only have a cordless phone and you need power to operate a cordless phone. Mobiles were for emergency calls only so we were effectively cut off from our loved-ones until power was back on. Plug in phones are as cheap as chips and good to have in 'the kit'.


Chimneys - A lot of houses have had chimneys come down and even fall through their roof. I'm sure the majority of these weren't even in use any more so if you have a chimney that isn't being used, pull it down now. Even those that didn't come down in the quake have since come down with the aftershocks and I personally wouldn't want to be on a roof when an aftershock hits.


The Plan - the last point I want to make is how good it was to have a plan. When watching the news during the last big earthquake the world saw (Haiti maybe?) we were chatting about what we would do if there was an earthquake in the middle of the night, never dreaming that it would actually happen to us. It was a very simple plan - I would go and grab Milly out of bed and my husband would grab Noah and we would meet at the bedroom doorways, which are right next to each other, and shield the kids while hanging on. We had thought about where the safest place in the house was in terms of how quickly we could get there and it being away from windows and glass. As soon as I woke up and realised it was an earthquake I knew exactly what I had to do. We were lucky that the house wasn't falling down around us but many people's houses were - in those cases seconds count.



Things feel like they are getting back to normal around here now. We can now drink the tap water and a couple of nights sleep have made a big difference to the nerves. We are all still pretty jumpy - when a truck rumbles past on the road we all have a moment of panic but I feel so much less stressed than a few days ago. Now we're looking forward to the school's being open again so that we can get a bit of routine happening. Thanks so much to everyone for their kind thoughts and comments.