Terror coming from the clifftops
Emma Russell and her boyfriend were enjoying a Valentine’s Day picnic when the cliff they were on started to shake.
They were sitting no more than 50 metres from the edge on Godley Heads when the ‘‘severe’’ 5.7 magnitude earthquake hit at 1.13pm on Sunday.
‘‘It literally sounded like dynamite just went off.’’
Cliffs collapsed at Whitewash Head at Godley Head and on the eastern side of Richmond Hill in Sumner.
‘‘You just heard all the cliffs give way around us, I’ve never sprinted so quickly in my life.’’
The pair dropped everything other than their bag with the essentials and ran back to the car.
Russell said it was lucky the pair decided not to sit on the edge of the cliff as they had originally planned.
It took about 10 minutes for the dust to settle and by then they had made it back to the car to drive home.
Hamish Pringle, his wife, two daughters and their friends were hiking to Boulder Bay along the Godley Track when the earthquake hit.
‘‘It probably wasn’t the smartest place in hindsight.’’
About 10 seconds after the quake there was a ‘‘pretty serious rockfall’’ about 200m from where the group were, Pringle said.
This was followed by a dust storm.
The children were ‘‘pretty traumatised’’ by the violent shaking, he said.
The group rushed back to the car, which was parked about 20 minutes away, trying to avoid loose rocks and boulders on the way.
In the water below, a couple who left Christchurch to escape the 2010-11 quakes were on a jetski tour showing a friend the city when cliffs came crumbling down around them.
Nick Smith, of Volo Jetski Adventures, was on the return leg of his jetski tour with an ex-Christchurch couple and a visiting friend when the rumbling began.
‘‘They had left after the first earthquake, and they were showing their American friend around. So it was uncanny that that happened right then,’’ Smith said.
Smith’s group had just reached Scarborough, and were about 200 metres from the cliffs when they began to fall. Had it been on their way to Sumner, they would have been 100 metres from the cliff. ‘‘The timing was impeccable.’’ Smith’s tour group were ‘‘pretty shaken’’, as was he. Dave Grant was in his Scarborough Hill home when the house started ‘‘shaking from side to side’’.
‘‘It was very violent. It felt like the house had been lifted up and come down again.’’ He said after about a minute a dust cloud emerged from a nearby cliff collapsing.
‘‘It sounded like a big rumbling. It was loud.’’
Marnie Kent was at home at her property on Ocean View Tce. Her home overlooks much of Sumner.
She said a ‘‘massive big dust bowl’’ formed as the Scarborough cliffs came away.
It then made its way back to the valley, where her home was located.
‘‘I could smell the dust,’’ she said.