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Press, 15 September 1976, Page 21

Tuesday, November 16, 1976. A waterside worker lights his first cigarette of the day. It is 6.40 a.m. Coughing, he backs his Holden station waggon out of the drive and turns on the radio. The Heathcote Valley is covered in fog. Tapping his fingers on the wheel, he steers the Holden on to Tunnel Road, braking as he approaches the toll gate. He reaches into his pocket for change. He is about to pay his dues. Driving into the tunnel, he notices that the headlights of an approaching car are flickering. His car begins to shake violently and he grips the wheel. First the road, then the tile overhead, begin to ripple. As he applied the brakes, the ceiling caves in. He is thrown to the floor. Stones crack the windshield; the roof of the car caves in. He is too confused to realise he has been buried alive. Static

rattle from the radio blares through the dust and rubble. 6.41 ajn. The sign on top of the Government Life building in Cathedral Square says the temperature is 17 degrees. Unfolding the morning paper, a travel agent in his office on the ninth floor of the AMP Centre is overcome by nausea. The coffee in bis cup sloshes from side to side. The building begins to sway. He gropes for the waste bin and vomits. There is a rumbling, then a crashing sound in the square. The Cathedral’s spire has toppled on to the cobblestones. The travel agent does not notice. 6.42 am. The children are screaming. Clutching one in each arm, a Mount Pleasant mother huddles beneath the dining-room table. The table slides across the room. Frantically, she realises the

house is sliding down the hill.

6.43 a.m. On the ocean floor, 23 km north-east of Lyttelton, great faces of rock are sliding in opposite directions. On the surface, a tsunami is forming. Within seconds, it is three metres high and travelling more than 200 km/h. A lighthouse watchman drops his cigar. A grey wall of water now 12 metres high funnels into the channel and races for the harbour. 6.44 a.m. An overhead power cable is snapped in New Brighton. Lashing like a whip and spitting fire, the cable ignites a row of bushes in front of a convalescent home on Estuary Road. Seconds later, flames are lapping at the salt-dry wood of the porch.

7 aan. 800 citizens are dead. All telephone communications are cut. Once every six minutes an after-tremor rocks the city, and more houses col-

lapse. The streets are tom apart, traffic is paralysed. Thousands are seriously injured. Some are trapped beneath fallen timbers. Some are burnt, some in shock, some with lacerations and broken bones. It will take the Civil Defence, at a minimum, 90 minutes to get organised.

7.15 a-m. A man in his 60s, wearing only his drawers, wanders drunkenly through the rubble in Cathedral Square. His eyes are glazed, his feet bleeding. A sailboat, thrown high up on to the Port Hills by the wave, slides down into Lyttelton and comes to rest against a garage. Riccarton, St Albans, and New Brighton are ablaze.

8 ami. The sun is beginning to break through the clouds. A deathly silence, and then suddenly the birds begin to sing violently. From Cashmere, a man looks down through the smoke at the ruins of Christchurch.