Earthquake!!

What happened next!

Soon after I had turned off the light, everything started to move. I live in New Zealand so this was hardly the first earthquake I had ever felt. But this one was different.

It started steadily, and was quite strong. I lay still and thought "this is quite a quake" Then it started to die away. Just as I was wondering if it had woken everybody else, it picked up again.

Strongly.

By now things were flying off shelves. My hubby was shouting something, but I couldn't hear what. Son was shouting "I'm OK! The books are falling off but I'm OK!" No noise from daughter 2's room. Daughter 1 was overseas.

As soon as it stopped, I shouted for everyone to come to me. Thankfully everyone was OK. I tried to put the light on but the power had gone. Son had his cellphone, and we lit a candle.

I'm not sure who mentioned Tsunami first, but within minutes were we in the car. We live on a sand dune, right at the coast, so we headed inland. As we went over the bridge we came down into water. Remember it was night time, dark and the power was off so no streetlights. We knew there had not been a tsunami, as we had come from the coast, so we assumed it was broken water mains. We carried on through water, past broken roads, and people standing out on the street, we finally made it to some friends.

I spent the next few hours lying on my back, under their table, whilst the earth rolled beneath us. My family and the friends were out and about as soon as it got light, the water was coming up from the ground through what looked like small grey volcanoes. Grey silt was everywhere. Aftershocks rolled through continuously. As I lay under the table, in pain from my back, my family and friends kept coming to check on me.

I was very miserable. I realised that I was the big fat problem in all of this. I knew that if I was not so fat my back would have a better chance of recovery. I had had an accident about 5 years before this story starts, and that had resulted in an operation that left me walking with sticks at first. I no longer used a stick, but I limped and I was very heavy.

I always thought of myself as the person who would cope well in a difficult situation. And there we were, my family out and about helping people, checking on people, organising food, water and sanitation, and what was I doing? Lying on the floor under a table whilst people popped back to check on me.

So I made a decision there and then.

Time to lose the weight, once and for all.