Boogying with the best in big shake

Is there such a thing as a before-shock? About half an hour before last Tuesday’s earthquake a picture frame dived off a shelf, knocked down a glass container (which didn’t survive) and pulverised a serving plate. In our shop that was a far more dramatic event than the actual quake. We have heard on the grapevine that merchandise fell off the shelves in a local department store, but we were lucky. A set of wildlife DVDs took to the air in a bid for freedom and one volunteer almost got locked in the littlest room when a pelmet fell across the door.

The building we have been fortunate to rent for seven years is a venerable timber building that boogies with the best of them in a good shake. What we have to take a closer look at is which shelves might need anchoring to walls. The charity trade is fortunate in that we don’t have boxes of merchandise above the displays like some supermarkets and we generally try to have heavy stuff at the bottom in good Kiwi common sense preparedness.

Pots and pans are around knee height. Bread makers about the same. We have a few too many filter coffee makers (hint, hint) so some are a bit higher up, but basically they huddle around waist height.

The exception, (and isn’t there always one?) is books. If a book needs to go under “Cooking” we can’t very well put the small ones up here and the big ones down there. We do what we can to minimise the risk. In a big shake the rugby books will tackle you at hip height and children’s books will bite your ankles but the encyclopaedias are employed as ballast in the bric-a-brac department.