Christchurch earthquake’s haunting aftershocks
At 12:51 p.m. on Feb. 22, 2011, a deadly earthquake struck Christchurch, New Zealand. At the time, Toronto Star reporter and Kiwi expat Olivia Carville was working for the city’s daily newspaper, the Press. On the fourth anniversary of the quake, she reflects on covering the disaster that killed 185 people. A lot can change in four years.
Children can become teenagers. Weeds can grow over graves. Cities can be reborn.
Four years ago, I was a 22-year-old junior reporter covering one of New Zealand’s deadliest natural disasters.
Alot has changed since then and so have I. This is my first earthquake anniversary away from home.
It is also the first year I’m not writing about the grief of someone who lost a loved one in that tragedy.
On past anniversaries, I would wander down to the memorial service at Latimer Square, which lies opposite the old Canterbury Television site — the deadliest location in the city — with my colleagues from the Press newspaper.
I would be reserved and quiet. Most of us would. After all, we, too, could have died that day.
I’d walk a few paces behind the others and stand at the back of the crowd, looking at the ground.
I never liked the memorial services. I struggled with the one-minute silence. I felt safer handling someone else’s grief on my computer screen than trying to deal with my own.
It was always so quiet in that minute; I would be unwillingly thrust back to the day and I could hear the sirens and taste the dust again.
This year, I am alone on the anniversary.
For me, in my new Canadian home, it was 6:51 p.m. on Saturday when Christchurch stood in silence to mark the fourth anniversary of the quake. I was 14,400 kilometres away, but for that minute my heart was in Christchurch. Any Kiwi expat likely felt the same. That’s why flowers pop up in road cones all around the world — a token gesture that first began in New Zealand’s quake-hit Garden City. That’s why Facebook feeds are full of tributes for our broken city. It’s all we can do from afar. I left Christchurch in June last year, just before my 26th birthday. I boxed up all my belongings, stored them in my Nana’s garage and said goodbye to my job at the Press, my long-term boyfriend, my family, my friends and my dad’s grave.
I told everyone I needed an adventure, a fresh start, a bigger city. Really, I left because I felt trapped.
Every time I went to City Mall I would find myself thinking about all the people who had died there. Their names, how many children they had, what they were doing in the moments before the quake hit. Physically, I would be standing amongst the throng of shoppers and tourists, but my mind would be with the ghosts of the fallen City Mall.
I would walk past High St. and rather than celebrating shops reopening, I would see flashbacks of paramedics giving up on the man who succumbed to his injuries beneath their hands.
In the days after the disaster, I struggled with the fact that people had died in front of me and I didn’t even know their names.
I had experienced maddening, merciless grief when I lost my dad suddenly a few months earlier, and I thought learning about the victims could help me heal. I asked the editor if I could reach out to the grieving families to build profiles of all those who had lost their lives.
On the first anniversary of the quake, the Press published the official memorial tribute to the 185 people who died that day. Tucked inside the newspaper on Feb. 22, 2012, was a 35,000-word pull-out broadsheet with a profile on every victim. I wrote it.
It was the first, and likely only, time all the victims’ photographs will be seen together as a number of the families provided us with an image on the condition that it never be published again.
After this, I became the encyclopedia of the dead for the Press.
Colleagues would ask me questions such as how many children we lost, how many elderly couples died together or how many people were crushed by fallen masonry.
I had the answers down pat. I still have the answers, but no one asks me those questions anymore.
I’m now living in Toronto and working for the Star. In my new home, snow piles up on the sidewalks, rock salt lines the footpaths, dogs wear booties outside and Great Lakes freeze over.
It’s not just the temperature that’s refreshing. No one here knows about that day — how much we lost, how much we grieved, how much it still hurts.
I love my new life. I love my new friends. I love my new job. But I’ve learned that no matter how much your life may change and no matter how far away you move, your past will always follow.
I can’t take back what I saw on Feb. 22. The grown men crying in the streets, the blood on the pavement, the bodies covered in dirty towels, the fear and confusion in the dying man’s eyes. It’s all part of who I am.
I can’t take back what I did or the regrets I still have.
I wish I’d called my mum to tell her I was alive before I ran into the disaster zone and lost reception for six hours. I heard the fear in your voice when I listened to your voicemail messages, Mum. I’m sorry.
I wish I’d told my boyfriend at the time that I was all right — when he couldn’t get hold of me he biked to the cordon and fought with the soldiers to let him past because he believed I was trapped in the rubble and he wanted to rescue me. I’m sorry, Richie.
I wish I had put my notepad down and tried to help people. I’m sorry.
When the time came for me to sit at a laptop in my torn and bloodied dress to write about what I had seen that day, I wish I could have written something more worthy, or at least something free of grammatical errors.
I wish I had been older, wiser and a better reporter so I could have done justice to the stories of the victims. When I interviewed their families, I listened, I asked questions and I politely thanked them for sharing their grief with me. I then got in the car and cried as I drove back to the newsroom; I wish I’d let them see me cry.
I wish they’d known I felt their pain and that it was more than just another story. But, I was young and I was naive. I have only come to understand all this since I left. I thought I’d leave all the pain and regret behind — but I was wrong, I carry it with me.
Sometimes it weighs heavily and I feel older than my 26 years.
Some days I feel like I’ve abandoned my wounded hometown. I fear that when I do return I will be given the cold shoulder; treated as a stranger in my own city.
But, my heart has and always will be in Christchurch, no matter how many miles away I am, no matter how long I’m gone and no matter how much it changes.
It’s my native land: It’s where I made my first mistakes, it’s where I learned to love, it’s where I learned to write, it’s where I learned to lose.