Adams Amy: General Debate 
Adams Amy: General Debate 
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AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) 
: 
 There is a feeling at the moment in Canterbury that anyone who is not living through what has been going on is not able to grasp what it is like for us in Canterbury. I think too that there is a sense that the earthquake in Canterbury is something that happened for about a minute and half early on Saturday morning. The reality is that it is very much still happening. Today we heard the Minister of Civil Defence speak of the nearly 300 aftershocks we have had. That sounds simple enough when we say it but I can tell this House that it means that everyone in Canterbury every man woman and child is feeling frazzled frayed and terrified. They are short of sleep. They are wandering around wondering whether the next shock is the big one. A truck will roll by and people do not know whether they should dive under a desk or grab their kids and head to a shelter. It is like living in a permanent state of fear. 
That fear over the last 5 days has done more to damage the psyche of Canterbury than probably the short shock on Saturday morning. Until we can feel that we are actually through this and we know what the damage is it will be really hard for the people of Canterbury to start to rebuild and move forward. Every day—in fact every hour—we are getting updates saying things like: “Following the last aftershock this is now closed. Lyttelton Tunnel has developed cracks and is not available. The airport is down again. The airport is back up again. This building has been evacuated. Cracks have now opened up in these roads.” This is not something that has finished. Every single day the situation is changing. I spoke to a chap this morning whose house was “green-stickered”—a phrase we have all become very familiar with—on Monday only for it to be condemned earlier this morning. Every time Canterbury shakes the picture changes for us. 
This morning I was with the Prime Minister right on the fault line at the epicentre near my house and we spoke to a team of visiting seismologists—I think that is the term. They told us—and I not sure it is something I wanted to hear—that following the earthquake in Haiti which was the same size as the Canterbury quake the major aftershock was about 8 days after the quake. We are only at about day 5. In Mexico which had a similar-sized quake the main aftershock was 2 months after the main quake. So for us in Canterbury it will be a long time before we know that we are even through the worst of the aftershocks. Many of us are living in houses right now as I am that we do not know when we go to bed at night whether they will be standing in the morning when we get up. I am not allowed in parts of my house and that is fine. At least it is still standing. We can rebuild that and everyone is fine but there is a fear that is difficult to explain. Those moments on Saturday morning are being relived by us every time we go to bed. We are reliving the physical violence of houses being thrown around. 
It is hard to believe that houses can withstand the sorts of forces that were being imposed on them. I had absolute certainty that my house would collapse around me and I can tell members that at that moment there was only one thing on my mind—and it was not Parliament and it was not the debates we have here and the contention. It was the family and where they were and whether I could get to them. My daughter was in the next room. We were screaming for her. She could not hear us and we could not get to her but when we did get to her we found that the fish tank which had flown across the room and smashed on her bed had missed her head by inches. That is the sort of story we are hearing all the time. It is incredibly hard it is incredibly challenging and it will take Canterbury a huge amount of time to recover. 
The physical impact is the least of it. I think that is the thing we are all starting to understand. The emotional trauma is massive and it is getting worse and the financial trauma is only adding to it. Everyday I hear of people who do not know whether they will have a job to go back to. The owners of factories are saying they are not sure they can reopen. The owners of businesses whose buildings have been shut down until they can be inspected are saying they will not survive if they cannot trade for the next few weeks. It may seem like a few broken buildings on the TV but it is so much more than that to a huge number of people. When we think about the fact that 100000 homes will need to be repaired we look at our houses and wonder how long we will be living in damaged houses and how long it will be before they are fixed. It really is a sobering thought. I know we are all incredibly lucky that nobody was killed and we are incredibly grateful for that. The euphoria at being alive got us through the weekend but now the reality of what it will take to turn this round is really hitting home. I thought it was important to speak to this House and try to give a bit of that sense of what the situation is like in the streets of Canterbury right now. I want to touch on the resilience of our communities. They have been fantastic and they make me proud to be a Cantabrian.