{"id":3847,"date":"2011-02-26T01:00:56","date_gmt":"2011-02-25T12:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=3847"},"modified":"2011-04-20T20:48:12","modified_gmt":"2011-04-20T08:48:12","slug":"earthquake-day-4-25-february","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2011\/02\/26\/earthquake-day-4-25-february\/","title":{"rendered":"Earthquake Day 4 (25 February)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I am too tired tonight, after 3 days of pretty much digging out sand and mud all day, to write a lot, but I thought that a few photos might tell their own stories.<\/p>\n

This first one is of sand (it looks like mud but it is sand) and water outside my back door, shortly after the quake–it took about\u00a0 a minute to get from nothing to this. To get an idea of the depth of sand, note the level against the pots.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This effect extended all down our driveway, through our garage and around a fair portion of our back lawn. The second photo shows the back lawn area; once gain, note the level against the pots.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Digging out the driveway<\/p><\/div>\n

Today, with the help of 17 people in total—not all at the same time, but during the course of the day—three of whom were complete strangers who just walked in off the street to help out, we managed to clear the garage, the affected parts of the back lawn and a few other garden hotspots, and the driveway. The driveway was probably the worst affected area though, with the liquefacted material up to a foot deep in places. We definitely couldn’t have made the progress we did if a neighbour, Paul, hadn’t spotted a man on a digger helping another resident of the street and asked him “to come down to Helen’s next.”<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/em>

Pitching in: the barrow & spade brigade<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

The man on the digger, Mark, turned out to be another resident of the street—it’s quite\u00a0 a long street and we’re at opposite ends, so didn’t know each other, but suffice it to say that I now owe him some beer. The digger, in a couple of hours, took care of what it would have taken the wheelbarrow and spade team a couple of days to get through.\u00a0 So three cheers for Mark and the digger, and another three for Paul for asking him to help me out.<\/p>\n

But seriously, I am just so grateful to everyone of the seventeen who turned up today, from my friend Irene, and also her tween daughter,<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The back lawn: dug clear today<\/p><\/div>\n

Petra, and her friend Kayla, who turned up first and wielded spades to great effect in the garage; the three walk-ins; my friend Joff who cycled from the far side of town to help dig for the second day in a row; my neighbours and friends Tina and Susie, and their families and friends, who all turned up to help in such numbers and to such great effect.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Cleaning up the street<\/p><\/div>\n

The other great news was that a council team turned up today to clear all the stockpiled material on the street—we know they’re getting round everyone as fast as they can, and there are a whole city of streets to be done, but it was really great to see them.<\/p>\n

And tired or not, this turned out to be quite a long post, after all—but how could I not acknowledge so many who helped me turn what I hope will prove to be the clean-up corner today?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am too tired tonight, after 3 days of pretty much digging out sand and mud all day, to write a lot, but I thought that a few photos might tell their own stories. This first one is of sand (it looks like mud but it is sand) and water outside my back door, shortly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-earthquakereports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3847"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5030,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3847\/revisions\/5030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}