Leah was teaching at her London St school, near Christchurch CBD & Avon River, when the 22 February 2011 Quake struck & when the 13 June 2011 Quake struck. Both quakes shook her school, threw furniture & items around in classrooms & offices & liquefactioned the school grounds: grey mud flooding the playground & carpark, oozing though concrete at the front door & backyard sandpit area.
Leah was thrown about & hurt in the 13 June 2011 Quake. In both quakes she stayed calm, pacifying kids, then waiting hours in the mud-oozing, school carpark during thumping aftershocks for anxious parents to fetch their kids.
21.11.11. Quake trashed, steel mesh fence cordoned Southern Community Laboratories for Blood Tests, Durham St Nth. The Blood Laboratories would be demolished
Post-quakes Leah lost weight quickly, & got her slim youthful figure again. She changed yoga classes (disliked a new teacher's exercises) & joined a new yoga class in a nun's building next-door to Southern Community Laboratories, a Blood Tests, two to three storey building, Durham St Nth, behind Southern Cross Hospital.
Although I was fit during quake years, 2010-2013, my blood pressure shot up & stayed high. My profound deafness: my Widex digital hearing-aid microphone didn't enable me to hear quakes, so my quake-experiences were mostly silent! I felt quake-vibrations & quake-shaking, but never heard quakes. There were damaged sports-facilities. Examples: Port Hills recreational areas were banned post-quakes due to rockfall danger. Several Council swimming-pools were closed due to damages, like Centennial Pool. Never mind ruined sports-facilities like AMI Stadium, QE11 Park athletics stadium, Porritt Park hockey stadium, Wilding Park tennis courts, Kerrs Reach rowing club houses.
21.11.11. Quake trashed, steel mesh fence cordoned Southern Community Laboratories for Blood Tests, Durham St Nth. The Blood Laboratories would be demolished
What aggravated Leahs' quake-anxiety (& kids' & other staffs' anxieties) was pounding by diggers, all day, while demolishing sections of Richmond Working Men's Club, opposite the school, London St / Stanmore Rd. Digger-pounding went on for weeks, worse than aftershocks.
Two years later, November 2013 digger-pounding would continue while the Club was intermittently demolished, section by section, months between demolitions. By that time Leah had the horrors and was looking for teaching elsewhere.
21.11.11. Quake trashed, steel mesh fence cordoned Southern Community Laboratories for Blood Tests, Durham St Nth. The Blood Laboratories would be demolished
On London St or Pavitt St, whenever heavy vehicles passed, the school shook like another quake. London St was a busy, connecting road, between busy Stanmore Rd & busy Bealey Ave. For months post-quakes, London St was in a rotten state of repair, lumpy & bumpy by the school, which aggravated daily school shakings. Only a year later, October 2012, would SCIRT replace sewage-pipes in London St, which caused traffic-detours & more damage to London St.
21.11.11. Quake trashed Southern Community Laboratories, Durham St Nth. The Blood Laboratories would be demolished
Durham St Nth: Late Monday afternoon 21.11.11, after Leah finished teaching, I drove her to her yoga class. Next-door, Southern Community Laboratories, an old, brick & concrete building, was ruined & steel-mesh-fence-cordoned. A roof wall-sign: BLOOD TESTS. Over the years, our family had blood-tests done in the laboratoriess, so knew the three-storey steel-mesh-fence-cordoned laboratory building.
21.11.11. Quake trashed Southern Community Laboratories, Durham St Nth. The Blood Laboratories would be demolished
While Leah did yoga, I snapped three sides of the steel-mesh-fence-cordoned, multi-storey ruin. Quakes had peeled bricks off walls & corners, showing the cracked, concrete-skeleton beneath. Main doorways were trashed. Two concrete-columns were exposed, moved sideways in quakes. Windows were smashed. I saw cracks on the brick-cladding & concrete-skeleton on three sides of the ruin.
21.11.11. Quake trashed Southern Community Laboratories, Durham St Nth. The Blood Laboratories would be demolished
Pity CERA left the ruin standing so long! Nearby ruins were demolished months before: A two-storey, old, brick dairy, Durham St Nth / Springfield Rd; a modern apartment block, Durham St Nth, where a car was crushed by collapsed undercover-parking in the 22 February 2011 Quake.
Wednesday 23.11.11. Labour leader Goff in a recent TV debate said PM Key was a liar. In Wednesday's TV debate Goff whined he had no time for dole-bludgers. As Labour leader, was Goff not dole-bludging on the tax-payers' purse? Pity Goff didn't make jobs for those he despised.
Key would smile all the way to election day & Goff lost the election. Goff left Labour & became Auckland's mayor. David Shearer would become Labour leader. Shearer didn't last. By October 2013, David Cunliffe would be the new Labour leader. After internecine squabbling, Cunliffe would be replaced in 2014 by Andrew Little, who would be replaced by Jacinda Ardern who would become Labour PM in 2017. She too wouldn't last.
06.01.12. Couple of weeks post 23.12.11 Xmas Quake Swarm, I would see the Blood Tests ruin again, trashed by the Xmas Quake Swarm: bricks fallen off north & west walls. That destruction sequence was seen all over Christchurch: more & more damages quake after quake. Southern Community Laboratories would be demolished.
*Trekked Durham St Nth. 28 snaps.
Coda:
By 2017, Mary Potter Community houses would be built on demolished Southern Community Laboratories site. The hall where Leah did yoga during quake-years would survive.
06.01.12. Bricks collapsed off N wall, Southern Community Laboratories, Durham St Nth, post 23.12.11 quake swarm. The Blood Laboratories would be demolished
Content & pics Copyright Mark JS Esslemont.
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