Dr Russell - Christchurch, New Zealand - 24 - 25 Feb 2011
Lost track of time for a bit. About 12 hrs to LA, then 2 hrs while plane refuelled, then about 12 hrs to Auckland. Another short break then onto a 747 to fly to Christchurch. About 30 hours of constant travel, crossing the international date line - we arrived early on Friday morning local time. Not really sure where or when Thursday happened.
Slept here and there en route and watched a whole load of films including the excellent '127 hours' about the adventurer stuck in a canyon who had to amputate his own arm. A miraculous story but it did make me think that we'd arrived in New Zealand well within that time frame from the original earthquake, so there might still be hope.
Welcomed by the British High Commisioner on arrival and then onto buses and into Christchurch. As we got closer to the centre of the city we started to see more and more evidence of the earthquake, starting with cracked walls, then chimneys down, and then the fronts of houses. The central part of the city has been completely cordoned off with only emergency personnel and guided press allowed access. As it turns out, the suburbs we came through were some of the least damaged. On the other side of town, out towards the East the damage is apparently much, much worse.
We are being accommodated (camping) in one of the central parks, Latimer square. The site is divided into different international sectors and surrounded by huge old lime trees (I think). I've camped in much worse places, so not a bad way to start. There are somewhere approaching 600 USAR personnel here with multinational representation, including Australia, USA, UK, Japan, Taiwan, Japan, and China. We met up with our advanced party so we total about 62 now. The first priority was getting the operating base, known as the BOO (Base of Opeations), set up. The medical tent went up in no time and we checked the gear to ensure we had an immediate treatment capability. Then our living quarters went up. I went to the main HQ to meet an old friend who is the senior doc on site, Dr Charmaine Tate, who kindly agreed to supply us with controlled drugs and oxygen that we needed. It was now Friday afternoon and Charmaine had had just over 2 hrs sleep since Tuesday but she appeared characteristically resilient.
As soon as the BOO was established and briefings complete, the first teams went out. Two USAR teams with Dave Murdoch and Dr Deidre Dunbar as the medical team. They left around 1800. Unsure what time Adam Watts and I would deploy, we scuttled to our respective tents to get some sleep. As it turned out, we weren't to deploy till 0600hrs Saturday but sleep was broken by discomfort (sleeping mat punctured), noise from people and machinery, and a couple of aftershocks - made all the more apparent lying pretty much directly on the hard ground..