Normal Service Will be Resumed as Soon as Possible

Just to let people know that we are safe, the earthquake was centred about half way between our house and the port of Lyttelton so we are in one of the worse off suburbs.
The EQC (government earthquake insurance) assessor was at our house inspecting for damage from the previous quakes. He was on the roof, gave our chimney a shove and pronounced it sound, and was halfway down the ladder when the whole city started to shake and the previously sound chimney sliced neatly off and landed in our driveway behind his car, stopping him from getting out.
That was quite convenient since he and his assistant were able to cover the hole in the roof and make it weathertight before they went. (They did manage to move the chimney enough to get the car out).
For the first day we were getting aftershocks every 1-3 minutes. Quite stressful. They are still very frequent. My brain feels quite fuzzy at the moment so don't expect anything very literary in this post.
Our suburb has quite a lot of damage to roads and bridges. There is silt everywhere from liquefaction. Our house has quite a lot of new cracks but we think it is not in immediate danger of falling down. We have no power, water or sewage. I have just heard on the news that water supply is back to 50% of the city, I don't know if that includes us. Earlier I heard that there was no water in 80% of the city and no power in about 40% of the city.
We have enough emergency supplies of water at the moment and half a barrel full of rainwater - we hastily pushed the barrel under a piece of broken spouting the first night when it started to rain. We have a gas barbeque and gas cook top. We have an old style phone that still works - the modern cordless phones don't work when the power is off.

I am at a friend's house where she has power, typing this on her laptop. I have photos on my camera but won't try to upload them at the moment. My own computer slid to the floor, so I'm not sure if it is working or not - I won't find out till the power comes back on. No word on when that will be.

Because search and rescue was a priority this time, other things like getting power, water etc and checking how people were doing were a bit lower down the list but it looks as if they are getting on to it now.

I haven't tried to go very far, there is a lot of traffic congestion with many roads closed. Tomorrow I may try to get to work, I normally work near the airport on Wednesday and Friday, it will be a big detour to get there on the other side of town but things are relatively normal there and they have showers. I never thought I would appreciate that quite so much.

My daughter has hiked to a friend's place where they have water, power and sewage, she was going to write a post for me, so if you are reading this D, you can still add that link to your blog for more information.