26 February, 2011

I'm often amazed by people's inability to accept being called a hero. During my time in Christchurch I so often heard that throwaway line we hear on the news in almost every natural disaster: “I did what anyone would've done”.

I'm here to tell you that that isn't necessarily true.

It takes a certain human being to keep calm while stepping over broken bleeding bodies to pull bricks and steel off a crushed 14 year old boy. It takes a certain human being to drag themselves through twisted, creaking buildings looking for signs of life as aftershocks threaten to crush them where they crawl. It takes a certain human being to keep a brave face and tell the world 'we're okay' when they're not.

I will never forget the carnage I saw the day after the Christchurch earthquake. As I walked the shattered streets there was nothing but the sounds of distant sirens and alarms all sounding at different pitches, different intervals like a broken 80's video game. It was the set of a horror movie. Roads were split, cars crushed, shops and buildings in pieces and the smell of burning plastic was overpowering.

I kept trying to imagine what it must've been like. Did the buildings sway from side to side or did they jolt up and down? How long did it last? How many people died? What does an earthquake sound like? These questions would be answered in the coming days and three young blokes a bit older than me helped me understand. They were three brothers Matt, Doug and Rick. Matt's the eldest, he's 41, Rick who's 38 and Doug 33. They happened to be working on a building that had been destroyed by another earthquake just five months before.

Picture a normal day in any city or town at about lunchtime. Kids are eating ice blocks, people are walking to lunch, on the phone in their office, out on the footpath having a smoke, chatting to a mate who's just pulled up to buy flowers for his mum in hospital. Suddenly and inexplicably everything shakes, shatters and breaks. It's 15 seconds of noise and screaming and running and crashing.

Matt and Doug were on the footpath looking at their brother high up on scaffolding as he put the finishing touches of cement on a building wall. As the ground shook, they watched helplessly as their brother smashed into the building while trying not to fall to the ground three storeys below. Somehow he held on, climbed down and dusted himself off.

In those surreal seconds after the earthquake their next move was to help in any way they could. Big strong country boys who'd been through a bit but nothing like this. They ran up the road and found a bus crushed by bricks, mortar and steel. Some of what they saw is too sickening for me to say and the horror of what they saw will hit them in the coming weeks. Like the crushed teenage boy in school uniform whose struggle for breath ended not long after they got there. Six were dead in that bus but one was alive. 40-year-old Anne Brower lay screaming with a broken leg. Doug picked her up and put her in the back of a car that sped towards the hospital. He wanted to talk to her but didn't have time as he picked up the sledgehammer and continued to break up the bricks that reminded him just how soft and vulnerable the human body really is. This is just one of many rescue stories that day, like the woman who amputated a trapped man's legs. After a while she just couldn't take it anymore and a policeman picked up the slack and somehow finished the job.

Heroes? Definitely.

The death toll keeps climbing and could reach as high as 200, maybe more. The thing is, we got to leave. We got to leave it all behind, to try and tell our friends and family back home of how aftershocks woke us up at night. We knew that was nothing compared to the real thing, not even close. After seeing those faces in the earthquake aftermath, I don't want to experience the real thing, ever. It's quite unnerving to see what the experience of surviving an earthquake can do to someone.

After returning to the city three days later, Doug ordered us to wind our windows down and not wear our seatbelts in the car. That way we could get out of the car quicker if another earthquake hit. The father of three little girls was jumpy, nervous and hesitant and it created an uneasy environment for everyone. But he didn't want to see more people get hurt, more people die. Doug hasn't had time to sit down and process the nightmare he's lived. When he does, I pray he'll have the care and support he'll need. That goes for a lot of Cantabrians whose lives have literally been shaken apart. But the kiwis are a tough bunch, just look at the All Blacks. They'll bounce back and rebuild and when they do, they'll be even bigger heroes. Just try and get them to admit it.