The earthquake knocked over the bird bath.
(I righted the bird bath after the initial earthquake. None of the after-shocks were sufficient to knock it over again.)
Laura, Nicola, and Debra watch a sand volcano build in the Wyn Street gutter.
And, yes, the newspaper always gets through! The Press newspapers were delivered in our area of Hoon Hay in the hours after the earthquake.
One of the many sand volcanos erupting from the ground after the Christchurch earthquake.
Laura and Max return to Christchurch from their holiday in California and inspect the earthquake-caused sand volcano in their front lawn.
Lots of people were out and about in the streets checking on everyone after the earthquake. When it was clear that everyone was OK, the sand volcanos became the feature of interest.
This has made a huge mess for the residents to clean up. I heard on the news that homes have been damaged by subsidence in areas of earthquake-caused liquefaction like this.
It would have been a glorious Spring day in Christchurch had it not been for the magnitude 7.1 earthquake at 4:30 am. All the water and silt you can see covering the street in this photo erupted from the ground following the earthquake.
Yes, it was a joke. The tours, that is, not the yard filled with earthquake-caused sand volcanos. They were very real. You can see one covering the driveway in this photo. The signs read as follows. "Tours run 1/2 hourly. $5.25 admission. Eftpos unavailable." "If you think this is bad... you should see the back!"