Life becomes normal but effects are lasting

Ben and Rachel Martin with their children, Daniel and Elizabeth, and their dogs, Zeki and Freud,...
Ben and Rachel Martin with their children, Daniel and Elizabeth, and their dogs, Zeki and Freud, at their Auckland home this week. Photo by New Zealand Herald.

In the year since the February 22 earthquake, some families have found the pressure too much and have moved. Others have stayed, their ties to the city too strong. The New Zealand Herald talks to two affected

Rachel Martin escaped from Christchurch in July, but her experience has made her permanently jittery.

•  The family that stayed

"It's always something that happens to somebody else," she said from her family's new home on Auckland's North Shore. "But when you have been through it, it's different. On Friday there was the big storm and I thought: what if there's a tornado?"

She worries about when the next Auckland volcano will erupt.

"It's something that's definitely going to happen in the long term, whether it's in my lifetime or the lifetime of my children or grandchildren. I don't want to be here when it does," she said.

Her husband, Ben, a mathematician, said: "The probability is small. You're much more likely to be killed by something mundane."

But Mrs Martin retorted: "That's what he said before the February earthquake."

Mrs Martin (36) is an Australian who moved to Christchurch six years ago. She loved the city.

"I thought it was a permanent move, that we were going to live there forever," she said. But she wanted to move as soon as a chimney fell on the roof above her head in the first earthquake in September 2010.

"I was just quite terrified, to be honest," she said.

"You can be totally relaxed, and within seconds your blood pressure is up, your heart rate is racing. It takes 10 or 15 minutes for all that physiology to settle down again."

Son Daniel, now 5, had trouble sleeping and going to the toilet alone, she said. Baby Elizabeth, now 2, seemed terribly vulnerable.

Mr Martin (42), who grew up in Dunedin, wanted to stay at first, but changed his mind after the February quake when the bedroom wardrobe fell over and broke, the fridge and the piano skidded across the floor and glass shattered everywhere.

He was extremely lucky when a rare job came up in Auckland University's maths department.

"Once the ground stops moving, you quickly become normal again," Mrs Martin said. "It was even faster for Daniel, who was quite badly affected. He sleeps well. There are no bad dreams. They seem to have survived remarkably well."

 - Jarrod Booker

 

 

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