The Day That Changed My Life Page #2

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people dying everywhere, and it's a mess.

No one knows what they're doing.

There are more than 30 trapped.

My expectations were that I would

get there and help to move rubble.

I had no expectation that we'd

be involved in a full rescue.

There was someone holding a ladder, and I

assumed my job would be to hold a ladder.

We stood there for about five

minutes, expecting someone to...

tell us what to do, and Tony and I just

looked at each other and put our hard hats on

and climbed up the ladder,

and...

And the first I ever got, there

was a guy caught under-his left shoulder -

a major beam had come down.

There was a medic there,

and the guy was on a drip.

And I was just watching

the medic's body language,

and, uh, I was just looking into the guy's face,

and I wasn't speaking, but I was just... reassuring,

in my mind, everything's gonna be all right; we're

gonna get him out. He had one more shot of morphine.

He looked at me,

and then he was gone,

and I was, like,...

'I got it wrong. I misinterpreted

everything. What if-?'

You know, 'If I'd known, I could've spoken

to him or got his name, or at that last... '

One had collapsed. He was somehow pushed to the side

and had half the top floor across his arm and leg.

There was nothing we could do for him.

All we could do was make him comfortable.

I gave him a whole lot of medications

that essentially put him to sleep

but took his pain away as well.

Um, died in his sleep, um,

which is probably a good thing.

I don't think we would've been able to

free him. He wouldn't have lived, I doubt.

Two more people were trapped, and within

a five-minute period, they both died.

So that's three people had died

in front of me in a

short period of time.

I couldn't see anything.

It was pitch black.

The ceiling had come to about... It was just

above me, and I was on my hands and knees.

That's when I realised that

something heavy was on my back,

and I was just screaming to one of the girls

that I could hear, that I knew the most,

to come and get it off my back. I thought

it was my desk, so I just kept yelling out,

'The desk's on my back, and it's so

heavy, and I can't get out from under it. '

I couldn't see my phone.

I could hear it buzzing behind me,

and I just couldn't reach it.

No one's-No one's

really too sure what to do.

Um, they're just staying as well

clear of those buildings as they can.

Whole image of the CTV building

played time and time again.

And it was just-you know, got worse and

worse, and I was starting to really really worry.

This guy walked in to the

building we were in and said,

'Look, we've got a, um, air ambulance

that we're taking down to Christchurch. '

'We've just delivered a child up to

Starship Hospital, and we're going back,

'and we've got one seat.

Would someone like it?'

I just said, 'Oh, well,

that'll be me. I'm going. '

Building's came down here. There's

people underneath the rubble down here.

Me and Dan's main focus was to film

what was happening in Christchurch

and to get it out for people to see

what had just happened to our city.

Is anyone in there?

There's a person trapped

in this store in here.

Rescue attempts going on. This

lady's been dragged out of the rubble.

Hey, guys, we need someone over

here. We got another trapped one.

He needs an ambulance.

He's looking so close to death.

Have to drag people

out of the rubble?

Sorry? No.

There's people trapped in there.

- Dead?

- Yeah.

There's a dead body. There's a

dead person underneath that blanket.

We've got Shane in there!

- Come on, man.

- From The Press.

- Doesn't matter. Have some respect.

- Yeah, I do.

Yeah, well, that's fine.

Go down there.

I saw a woman with blood

just all over her face,

and I heard her say, 'Libby, '

and that's-that's my name,

so I turned around, and I realised that she

was a really close family friend of mine,

and I hadn't recognised her,

because her nose was,...

to put it graphically, hanging off her face,

and she just-I couldn't tell it was her.

And she remembered a bit of building coming down,

and she explained it as being squashed like a staple.

I sat behind her and I tried to...

to support her so she

could breathe properly,

but I could hear from her breathing

that there was blood in her lungs,

and that's when I started to cry.

It became real when I saw her

injured, because she was real to me.

She wasn't just someone I was documenting. She

wasn't someone I was writing about in my notepad.

She was Jane Taylor, she was one of my best

friend's mothers, and she was gravely injured.

Dan, we need an ambulance.

Yeah, OK, hang on.

Can you-? Can we get

Jane an ambulance?

I'm trying. I'm trying.

And she had all her ribcage broken, one of

her lungs punctured, her pelvis broken,

her neck fractured,

a skull fracture.

And then Shane Tomlin,

he got pulled out,

and he was making that same

inhuman groaning noise,

and you can just tell that

there's something seriously wrong.

And then Jane lost consciousness, and they had to

choose between taking Jane or Shane to hospital,

and at that point, Shane was still making

these noises, but Jane was unconscious.

It... I mean, you know,

they-rock and a hard place, really,

but they got Jane there and flew her

straight to Wellington Hospital.

Uh, obviously, it's a scene of utter

devastation, as we had everything on our side

at the last earthquake, in terms of the timing in

the middle of the night, when people weren't around.

It's been the polar

opposite this time.

While we are doing everything we possibly can, I

wanna give people an absolute reassurance that, um,

we're dispatching as many people as we can. We've

got about 180 police working on the ground here,

200 extra police coming in, 350 military

people, with another 250 on their way.

I don't think we can, uh, go past the fact

that we may well be witnessing NZ's darkest day.

We had a list of people that had been made contact

with, and they were trapped on the second floor.

And it was just, basically,...

smashing concrete.

There was probably an hour and a half to two

hours to break through on the first floor.

We broke through, Tony and I dropped

down, and it was just absolute mayhem.

And the first thing I saw was...

two black shoes,

and I just naturally thought, 'Yep, that's the

first person we're gonna get out alive, ' and...

Tony shook his legs, and he said to

me, 'Oh, mate, he's not looking too good, '

and I just naturally thought, 'He's-He's injured.

We'll get the medic down, and it'll be fine. '

Then we heard this voice. 'Oh, that's such and

such. I've checked his pulse. He's-He's dead. '

And... I looked at Tony, he looked

at me, and I- and there was a lady there,

and there was only one way to get

her out, and it was over that body.

Yep. There it is.

Oh my God. F***, what a lucky lady.

All right. Just keep goin'. Yeah.

Just hold it, guys. Just hold it.

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