Mandi forewarned me when I sat down to watch it. I’d already figured there would be EQ footage as I knew it was in Chch because of the rebuild etc., but it’s funny how even when you’re prepared for it, it can still smack you in the face and stop you in your tracks.
1st shot I saw, was the Iconic Bar crumbling and me scrambling away from the rubble. When I explain that moment in time to people; they get the seriousness of the situation; they understand the danger of the moment. I don’t think they realise that moments earlier I was desperately trying to free my friends body from under that rubble. That moment in time and the few minutes that precede it will remain with me forever. I won’t say they haunt me but they certainly don’t comfort me.
The very next shot was my car, crushed and flattened by a concrete parapet. Shocking enough in itself but on the tail of the previous image I find it almost comforting.
Mandi doesn’t like that image. It takes her back to that day and the turmoil that surrounded it. It reminds her of the disbelief she had when I told her the car had been crushed. She couldn’t comprehend that it was just gone. When I pointed it out to her on the TV news clips she couldn’t even recognise it. When she finally came to terms with it, it just hammered home to her how close I came to being crushed to death. If that had happened she probably would not have known for days as I had not originally intended to be in town that day.
I was lucky that day, …didn’t feel lucky at the time though.