Mr Harland was in his New Zealand Transport Agency office on the fifth floor of the BNZ building, on the edge of Cathedral Square, when the devastating 6.3 magnitude quake struck Christchurch at 12.51pm on Tuesday, February 22.
A still shaken Mr Harland yesterday described the massive shake as "the most frightening experience I have ever had".
He was in the office's bathroom when the lights went out, a roar filled the air and the floor began to shudder violently.
"There was an initial nudge, and then there was an extremely violent shaking of the building I was in."
Returning to the office, he found terrified staff cowering under desks amid a scene of devastation, with computers and the contents of filing cabinets strewn everywhere.
"The office looked like a giant had gone through and thrown everything on the floor."
Minutes later Mr Harland and other staff gathered in Cathedral Square and the first aftershock brought the spire of the Christchurch Cathedral crashing down.
The atmosphere, Mr Harland said, was "surreal".
"We were about 30m from the cathedral and I ... saw the cathedral vibrating like a leaf in the wind, and when that quake stopped the spire collapsed.
"There was so much noise as things came down and then there was quite a bit of screaming in the square immediately afterwards, and then essentially silence."
He spent the next four hours on foot, walking first to Victoria St to check on staff inside the NZTA's second office.
All the staff there were safe, and he headed home to his sister's house in St Martins.
Along the way, he snapped photographs of shell-shocked survivors and chatted with "polite" strangers seeking reassurance, and passed the crumpled four-storey Pyne Gould Corporation building.
"I thought it was a warehouse that had collapsed ...
"It didn't register immediately that there could have been a lot of people who'd been injured or killed there."
He also offered help to Civil Defence authorities who were establishing a headquarters in central Christchurch, being a trained Civil Defence controller; before returning to the wrenched, powerless home of his sister.
"That night, the aftershocks, they were a concern, they really were.
You just wondered whether you were going to get another one that brought the house down.
My experience would have been repeated across most people in Christchurch."
Mr Harland had been busy since, helping account for staff and overseeing the assessment and repair of the city's state highway network.
He still planned to divide his time between the South Island and Wellington, as part of his new role, but expected to spend more time in Christchurch helping rebuild NZTA's disrupted operations in the meantime.
The Victoria St office had received a red sticker, meaning it was not safe to enter, but the condition of the BNZ building was not yet known.
The hunt was already on for temporary premises in Christchurch, but Mr Harland travelled to Wellington this week, just in time for Tuesday night's 4.5 magnitude quake that struck the capital.
"But I just feel for the Canterbury people.
"Numbers don't actually tell you what it's like to be in a significant earthquake ... It's hard to describe how terrifying it is."
