Samuel Shepherd thought beating cancer was hard.
Now, he's used his second life.
Lynette Baird cannot sleep in a house after her dream home crumbled around her head.
For Michael Williams, the sense of utter disbelief is just like Abbotsford all over again.
If Nikki Rhodes and daughter Olivia (15) had been home, they could have died when two boulders the size of SUVs rolled and jumped down the hill.
One went through Olivia's bedroom, the other through their Rapaki home's lounge and kitchen, before continuing down the hill.
Two more giant boulders came to halt inside their neighbour's bedroom and kitchen.
But you will not hear Lytteltonians complaining.
Up the road from the town, two people were killed when hit by falling rocks while on Lyttelton's Crater Rim Track.
They were believed to be among the five victims from the Lyttelton area, which was severely damaged in the quake on Tuesday.
While they were counting themselves lucky, given what was happening over the hill in Christchurch, Lytteltonians knew their town would never be the same, Mrs Baird said.
When the earthquake struck, she and husband Phil were inside their historic home, renovated just a year ago when the couple moved from Auckland.
They were tossed on to a wall, fearing for their lives.
When bricks started raining down around the building, they knew it was time to get out.
The house is now uninhabitable.
The earthquake had taken Lyttelton's history and its heart, she said.
All of the community's favourite places were damaged, most beyond repair.
Among them were popular haunts for locals and visitors, Cafe Volcano on London St, the Lyttelton Coffee Company, and the Harbourlight.
"These are the anchor points of our community.
It's going to change Lyttelton forever."
Almost every historic building, and many more modern structures are rubble or have massive, clearly irreparable cracks in them.
The community would get each other through this, as they had since September 4, Mrs Baird said.
The town's three churches are destroyed, including New Zealand's oldest Anglican church, the Holy Trinity, and most likely its 130-year-old vicarage, which was badly damaged.
While Vicar Neil Struthers was away blessing the body of a person killed by a falling boulder while walking above Lyttelton on Tuesday, his son Samuel (34) showed the Otago Daily Times through the almost completely destroyed church.
"A woman was in there practising the piano for church on Sunday, when the glass blew in, and this whole wall collapsed in towards her. She was just in the right spot and got out OK. It was incredible."
Mr Struthers, who has spent the past year fighting cancer, said he felt he had now used two of his lives, after the earthquake.
He was standing in the vicarage's kitchen when the windows blew in, the ceiling partially collapsed and the microwave flew across the kitchen, narrowly missing his head.
The vicarage, also recently completely renovated by the parish, was in total disarray, walls splitting, precious paintings and china destroyed.
Outside, the potatoes in the garden popped out of the ground.
In London St, 8-year-old Tyrese McGregor said his family was sleeping in a van because his house was "done for".
He narrowly missed injury when his classroom collapsed around him and his fellow pupils, he said, but he was happy to be safe and alive.
Former Dunedin man Lindsay Gough said everyone in Lyttelton was still a bit shell-shocked, but bearing up well and just waiting for information on what to do next.
Another former Dunedin man, Michael Williams, said he had the same feeling of absolute disbelief as he had after the Abbotsford landslip in Dunedin.
He was a teacher at Abbotsford School when the slip happened.
In Sumner, a family gathered at the end of a no-exit street said they had lost their home when rocks from the cliff behind slid on to it.
A woman in the group said her children's grandfather died in the earthquake, and they were now watching urban search-and-rescue teams with dogs try to locate an elderly female neighbour in the wreckage of her home, which was mostly under large boulders.
Police were cordoning off an area where a large rock fell on the RSA car park.
Bodies are believed to be at the scene, but searchers have not arrived yet.
In nearby Redcliffs, Helma Seale had packed her cat and as much clothing and bedding as she could into her car, and was leaving her house, which she suspected might collapse in the never-ending aftershocks.
In Bexley, Brighton and Aranui Sts, car after car is stuck in liquefaction or down a hole, or both.
Streets are flooded, bridges are closed and orange road-closed signs greet drivers at nearly every turn.
In every affected suburb, hundreds line up for water from tankers, tile roofs are ripped asunder and cracked and potholed streets undulate in a way that makes it beyond belief they will ever be flat again.
