‘Crazy day’ of floods and sinkholes
Residents in the Christchurch suburb of Parklands endured a ‘‘crazy day’’ after the earthquake left a trail of sand, water and sinkholes throughout their neighbourhood.
The holes opened up in Bower Ave, which was due to be resealed on Monday, after Sunday’s magnitude-5.7 earthquake.
Authorities fenced and coned off the the largest of them, which was about three metres long and one metre deep.
Resident Tosh Prodanov said he had to drive through sand and water from liquefaction to get to his home.
‘‘There was a mixture of sewage and liquefaction, just a whole messy liquid.
‘‘We have been waiting for a long time to get this fixed so I hope it doesn’t delay things too much more.’’
Another resident, who only wanted to be known as Melanie, said: ‘‘The hole was bubbling when I left for work . . . A digger arrived about 40 minutes after the earthquake to clear the road.
‘‘We’ve been waiting five years for it to be fixed so what’s another couple of months?’’
Engineers assessed the scene on Monday and took photos of lateral spreading and liquefaction damage.
Senior geotechnical engineer Pierre Malan said the holes were an ‘‘erosion feature’’.
‘‘They are a modification of the liquefaction volcanos people have seen in the past . . . material in the ground has been eroded away by moving fluid which is from liquefaction or a service [pipe].’’
On nearby Linkwater Way a white smudge ran along the side of the road where liquefaction occurred on Sunday.
Resident Rebekah Wawatai was driving when the earthquake hit and she said the car felt like it was on jelly.
‘‘There was water and mud coming up our drive. Our road had just been sealed on Friday.’’ ‘‘It was a crazy day.’’ Across town, Glenn Corbett, of New Plymouth, was at the Clearwater golf course watching Lydia Ko take out her third New Zealand Women’s Open title when the earthquake struck.
‘‘I was standing right beside a lake, and all the water started jumping up and down, and the birds took off.’’
It was ‘‘the biggest earthquake I’d really felt and seen happen’’, he said, an experience he described as ‘‘surreal’’.
‘‘When you’re in a big open space like that, you don’t feel any danger, but there was definitely a lot of uncertainty until people could get through on the internet and see what was going on.’’
Visiting from Glasgow, Greg Kelly was in the Antarctic Centre when the ground started to move. He said he was impressed by the calm demeanour of Cantabrians.
‘‘It was my first earthquake so it was quite different to say the least, but other than feeling the ground move, everybody was really calm.
‘‘They just escorted us out of the building, checked the building, and then carried on regardless.’’