[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF3m2kjJnxQ&w=420&h=315]
[ Thanks to YouTube
poster LooksCrisp for the series of pics in the video! ]
LET’S JUST SAY Wellington (my temporary adopted city) has received more than its share of natural (and man-made) eff-ups lately, if you’ll forgive the french. All around the Wellington region are cows and farmers bearing the brunt of the latest
dairy industry PR fiasco that’s resulted in
NZ milk being banned from China,
Russia, a few
former Soviet republics and
Sri Lanka. Then there’s a share in the
nationwide drought earlier this year, punishing gale-force winds that torture man and beast once too often, tsunami alerts, and of course, the series of tremors that brought them about.
You would believe me I think if I say that we can sit and bear all of the above misfortunes EXCEPT the last one, the latest of which once again caused a stir over the weekend all over Central New Zealand reminiscent of
a month ago, when quite a few shelves and their contents were turned topsy-turvy.
Owing to prudence, common sense and just plain good luck,
Mahal and I kept clear of that most recent quake, but we still had our share of Freaky Friday when everything rocked in Windy Welly.
It all started when Mahal and I thought we would cap our short leave from work together by going on an afternoon car ride to somewhere we’d never been, or a cozy little
gulod we’d never seen. Better yet, rare exhibitions of Renoir, Cezanne and other impressionists on the one hand, and
Andy Warhol on the other, were being held at
Te Papa, the museum in town. Whichever came first or wherever exit first presented itself on the motorway would be our destination.
Just before we filled up our faithful steed at the last-chance petrol station, we abruptly decided that uptown was too far for us and went for a mall we’d never gone to. There wasn’t any logical, practical or sane reason for doing so. At 2.31 pm, as soon as we finished refilling the tank, all the cars in the vicinity, including our own, began swaying. Mahal thought I was fooling around and pushing the car, when she realized everything else was moving. People around us started running around, before the quake stopped around 20 seconds later.
You’d think that by then we’d reconsider travelling and call it a day, but no siree. Not having a TV, laptop or talk radio around, there didn’t seem to be any urgency to change plans, and we still went to that mall away from
Lower Hutt where we lived, but still outside
Wellington City proper.
We still had around an hour of normal malling pleasure, looking at the
K-Mart and local shops before we found out that the majority of the mall stores were closing early just to be on the safe side, structural concerns and all. Mall employees were also being let off early. So that ended our surprisingly short excursion to
Porirua.
The surprises weren’t over by any means. When we got to the motorway, traffic was a bit heavier than usual, which wasn’t that unusual since it was Friday afternoon, and the heavy flow away from the city was expected.
What wasn’t expected was that the traffic
on the other side, which we could plainly see, was also heavy. What we hadn’t known until then was that because there was minor chaos in Wellington, all city-bound vehicles since the quake took place had been having a hard time reaching their destination.
Around a couple of hours later on the news, we saw that thousands of commuters were stranded trying to leave the city, and the situation was aggravated by the train system suspended for safety reasons. People were trying to get home by any means, and police were flagging down motorists for instant carpooling. Happily, in true Wellingtonian spirit, many motorists obliged.
It dawned on us that had we gone through with our original plan of visiting the museum and surprising
Ganda and
Bunso in their
new jobs,
we would’ve been the ones surprised, ending up most likely trapped in the gridlock that ensued and unable to go home for a good hour plus.
Still and all, it was a relief for most of us. Given that it was a magnitude 6.6 earthquake (at the epicenter), stronger than the one around a month earlier, and that magnitude 5 aftershocks filled the next 24 hours till today, it was a Godsend that there were no serious injuries.
I can only surmise that there was something (or maybe Someone) beyond the usual five senses that told us to avoid town that fateful Friday, saving us from a lot of grief and a lot of inconvenience, and we certainly aren’t complaining.
Thank you po.
I’m likewise hoping that Messieurs Cezanne and Renoir as well as Mr Warhol will be kind enough to extend their hospitality for a few more days. I don’t think, all things equal, Mahal and I will be able to view their iconic paintings in our lifetimes if we pass up this opportunity.
And no more earthquakes
, please?
Thanks for reading!
*
W stands for Wellington, city or region, also known as the biggest little capital anywhere on the Southern Hemisphere.
