[NHCOLL-L:4953] Update on Christchurch earthquake

[Jim Croft]

some more news from Ilse from Herbarium CHR:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ilse Breitwieser <BreitwieserI at landcareresearch.co.nz>
Date: Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 3:46 PM

we were pretty lucky! The herbarium is OK (except one cabinet that
fell over and a few small ceiling panels that came down).  The
herbarium building is structurally OK.

All staff are OK, most of our houses are still sort of standing,
although some houses have quite a bit of damage.
Rainer and I were really lucky, we have only to deal with a couple of
windows that got cracks and broken pottery, vases, damaged pot plants
etc - and a broken bottle of gin!  We even got electricity and water
back - although there are warning about water quality.

The inner city has a lot of damage.  You will probably have seen it on the news.

It was certainly a very scary experience and VERY LONG 45 seconds at
4.30 am this morning!  Just got another after shock - I hate these
....so I better stop...

[...]

I will be able to tell you more tomorrow.  The Lincoln site will be
open and we will all help one another with the offices (apparently
some are quite a mess) and the herbarium (no damage of herbarium
specimens!!!).  I haven't been to Lincoln yet since all is closed by
security until tomorrow morning.

[...]

I'll be at work tomorrow - work is closed by security until tomorrow
morning.  Apparently we need to do quite a bit of clean-up in the
offices, but the herbarium sheets are OK.
I'll send an update tomorrow.
Yes, inform people - a snowball effect of the news that we were lucky
will help us since it's hard to find the time to reply to emails.
I am pretty exhausted - the aftershocks didn't let us sleep last night.
However, we are happy: we were all alive and well - we were so lucky!