Different this time..

..Worse!! Much worse than 4 September 2010.  This time people are dead..
This time too i wasn't at all 'detached & interested' (as perhaps i may have been last time).
I was upset & depressed.
And when a senior Police officer made 'a hard call' that the CTV site was no longer 'survivable', i got really depressed, wondered if everything that could (have) be(en) done was done, like the Pike River mine disaster (about which i've said nothing but have horrible doubts).. 

Admittedly, this IS different. This began as an ugly surprise that got worse the second time around - no-one, not even the seismologists, expected Christchurch to be subjected to such a major event: a Richter 7.1 earthquake; & when the aftershocks kept coming, & coming, & coming, & eventually lessening, they then thought the time-frame for a major aftershock event had passed.


And the Richter 6.3 quake was much worse - shallower, nearer, & worst of all, at a critical time of day: lunchtime, not sleepy-o'clock-in-the-morning, & weakened (perhaps subtly so) buildings fell & buried their occupants.


I crawled out of bed today @ 5.30pm, wondering why i felt so depressed at an event which did not touch me directly - yesterday, down here in Port Chalmers, just out of Dunedin, at the event time i thought 'hey, we're having an earthquake!  Should i get under a doorway? Ummm.. no..' & turned on the TV instead, which was just starting to post 'Breaking News' messages.  I listened, & watched, but it didn't really hit me until this morning when i found i just didn't want to get out of bed - it really was hitting me now & i felt very very depressed, even unwell, & i flagged my Polytech lecture & a dental appointment for the day (but i did go to my Wednesday evening 12-step meeting).


My post for the previous quake was all about Christchurch - this one's more about me..

Nonetheless, i found a technical site which collects stuff better than i do - it's on a blog i follow.
It's a clearinghouse for #eqnz reports by a guy named David Winter on The Atavism.
One of the more meaningful measures he mentions was something i heard discussed yesterday by the seismic people - peak ground acceleration, in this case 1.88g (when you round a bend hard in your car - sports or otherwise - you feel g-forces, & that's what Peak Ground Acceleration is measured in).  That was the real killer - a combined indicator of Richter scale, depth & proximity, expressed as a real resultant.
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