The Day That Changed My Life

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I saw one of my colleagues, and he just said,

'The building's going down. We're going down, '

and that's when I thought,

'Sh*t. We actually are going down. '

It was so violent that it was actually going

up and down, and I was lifted off the ground.

And then the dust was everywhere, and I remember

it kind of choking me; trying to cough. And then,...

it stopped.

Could see the sky, so I knew

that our building was munted.

As we went for the stairs, we were actually kind of

jumping over bits of the building to try and get down,

and everyone was, you know,

'Go, go, go, go!'

Like, kind of go as fast as you can, cos they

didn't know if another aftershock was gonna hit.

Extremely lucky to-to have survived,

as the building's infrastructure is down.

Our whole building is gone. It's

just smoke and ruin at the moment.

And I was, like, 'Holy sh*t. I can't

believe I just got out of there alive. '

There's people trapped on the top of our Press

building. The walls have collapsed around them.

The videographer from work, Daniel Tobin, he

came round, and he was, like, 'Are you OK?'

And I was, like, 'No. ' And he was,

like, 'Can you do work?' 'Yup. '

Just say what you feel.

OK. What's the time?

1 o'clock. Here?

Yeah, OK. So if people can-

It's just after 1pm on, um,...

Tuesday the 22nd of February.

Um, we've just been hit by a devastating

earthquake in Christchurch again.

I'm one of the reporters from The Press building.

I was upstairs when it hit. Buildings fell down.

We're out in Christchurch Cathedral Square. As you

can see, people are just gathering round.

We were in the library,

up on the top floor.

The spire of the Christchurch

Cathedral has fallen down.

There's dead people.

There's people crushed.

OK. Sorry.

Sh*t.

People just everywhere.

There's a lot of people in shock.

There were just hundreds of people

gathered around, just thinking, 'Oh my God.

'I can't believe this has happened.

I can't believe this has happened here. '

You can see them gathering here

today, hugging each other in support,

trying to get in touch with people they love to tell

them that they're safe or ask if others are safe,

but there's no communication in and out of

central city of Christchurch at the moment.

All phone networks were down.

There were no ambulances.

There were no police.

There were no officials.

Oh, that's gas. That's f***in' gas.

Oh my gosh.

There's people killed in this.

You were just faced

with a broken city.

Are there people in there?

Oh f***.

It was madness.

Have a look around. Do something!

People are just roaming round, just distraught. No

one knows what to do or where to go at the moment.

It's...

It's hard to explain, really.

It's just terrifying.

Comms, CHO4. When there's an opportunity, we

could do with an ambulance and St John's staff.

We've got quite a few

injured people here.

OK. Who needs urgent

assistance in Central City?

We had lots of conflicting

information coming through.

The problem was communication

and information.

Ambulance.

Got multiple

building collapses...

There's buildings

down everywhere.

Buildings have collapsed.

Try to stop all the bleeding.

I've got a critical here.

You start to build a mental picture, and

you think that this is quite catastrophic.

We've got, uh, major damage

throughout the entire city.

Oh sh*t. Hold on, hold on,

hold on, hold on!

At that point - right at that very point - my

day that I knew was gonna be changed forever.

You have, you know, the choice to either blend

into the background or take on a leadership role,

so I kind of found myself

thrust into that.

We need somewhere to take the injured. We can't

get them to the hospital. We got multiple injuries.

I sent a convoy of vehicles

off to Latimer Square,

and we set about essentially

building a hospital.

Please be careful.

We came to Latimer Square, and there were just injured

people everywhere, and I remember I found one person

who looked like an authority or an official

who could give me a comment, and I said,

'I know you're busy, and I know you

don't have time to talk to me,

'but can you just please tell me what's going on?

What can I tell people right now in Christchurch?'

And he said-the only thing

he said to me was,

'Multiple casualties. Tell the people that

they're alone for the next 24 hours. '

I remember thinking, 'Oh, it looks like

we're turning, for some reason, '

and no one had said anything.

They turned the plane around, then

told us there'd been an earthquake

and the control tower had been evacuated,

and they're returning to Auckland.

I rang Susan to see if she was OK.

Her phone went through to her voicemail, so I

left her a message and then spoke to my two sons,

and they said they're OK,

but it was a really big earthquake.

Back to Christchurch, where one of

the first reporters to broadcast from...

I went up to the Koru Lounge, and it was

just chaos up there. Everyone was up there.

Every direction you look, it is

just absolutely catastrophic.

Um, buildings have tumbled; there's a five-storey,

six-storey building I can see in front of me.

And they were showing all

these shots of Christchurch.

They've cordoned off, uh, about three

or four cars right next to our building.

They then showed this

huge big pile of rubble.

Then the camera sort of panned down, and

they had this sign in front of it which said,

um, Canterbury Television House.

And I just looked at that, and I thought,

'God, that's the building Susan's in. '

What I just knew at that point was I

needed to get back to Christchurch.

We were then told

Christchurch Airport was closed

to all flights, uh,

other than emergency flights.

Oh my God!

Get out of the way!

The Pyne-That's the

Pyne Gould building.

People yelling!

You can hear people

screaming up there.

There's another shock. Move

back. Just keep away from the edge.

Everybody back!

Away from the building!

Everybody back!

We were given a tasking to go round to the

PGC building to, um, take some medications.

I guess you're wondering how you're

gonna brace yourself when you see, um,

some people that have got crush

injuries or have been crushed,

and there was a likelihood

we were gonna see them.

You'd-You'd see the building as

a whole is a-is a damaged building.

And if you look closely, it's like one of those

pictures; you can see something in the background.

And then you started to see people that were still

trapped, um, obviously dead, still in the rubble.

You see limbs hanging out; you

can make out faces in the rubble.

And that was probably the-the most sobering thing,

knowing that people had gone about their daily lives,

and all of a sudden,

it had been stopped.

There's firepeople, a lot of police and, um, I

guess you could say, just construction workers.

Ultimately our-they were our rescue guys at the time,

um, having the best knowledge of a building site.

Get into Pyne Gould Guinness, there's

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