By Jeremy Elwood

I began the 22^nd of Feb with a leisurely brunch in Dunedin, having done three shows the night before at Otago University’s Orientation week. I was a little annoyed, but not too much, when my fellow performers decided that we should arrange our ride to the airport for 12 noon, despite the fact that our flight wasn’t until 2:45pm. Hey, what the hell, they had guest passes for the Koru club.

So, just before 1pm, that’s where I was when the building started swaying. An asparagus roll and a Bloody Mary in front of me. My companions had differing reactions. One was locked into his online groove, making the most of all-too-rare free wi-fi. The other was the first to notice; having never experienced an earthquake before, she was understandably a little bemused and concerned. We all were, really, treating it the way you treat a fire alarm in a hotel, or a burglar alarm at a neighbours house – an intriguing inconvenience. We don’t move, we don’t panic. We don’t do anything. The staff come over and, with a smile on their faces, suggest we might want to move away from the plate glass window. We do, laughing. After all, it’s nothing major, just a bit of sway in an area that isn’t unfamiliar with it, whether it be localized or a tremor felt from Fiordland.

But then someone went online, and found out where it was centered.

Christchurch.

What happened from there was both a case study in tragedy and a modern lesson in stress management. The first few minutes, the few of us in the room reached not for a radio or a TV remote, but for social media. Twitter started quietly, Facebook loud.

“Someone’s just written “FUCK!” on their status. Ha! Must be a big one.”

We still had no idea. The flight that had just boarded, which I had tried in vain to get us transferred onto, had stopped on the runway, and the lounge was beginning to fill up.

Then someone turned on the TV.

The first image that stopped the room was the Cathedral; spire gone, a pile of rubble at its base. Had I been on an earlier flight, chances are that at 1pm I would have been sitting no more than 25 meters from that spot, Guinness in hand, lunch on its way.

Speaking of which; by this point, almost everyone in that airport lounge had a drink in one hand, a smartphone or laptop in the other. The most ancient of coping devices, meet the newest. A cart came out, and restocked both the bar and the Asparagus rolls. The airline (oh, why not; I don’t usually promote individual companies, but this was Air New Zealand, and their staff were incredible today) started quietly making calls, tapping keys, redirecting passengers and making connections.

We ended up on the first plane out, to Wellington, with a connection to Auckland. The atmosphere on both planes was subdued – everyone knew why we were late, why we were flying, where we weren’t going. On arrival in Wellington, security staff were on hand to direct us to the right gate, to explain the situation, to pointedly ignore the PA announcement hailing a Civil Defence Charter flight leaving at roughly the same time. We made the connection, we got home, we travelled in silence in the shuttle to the carpark, at least until the driver turned up the radio for the news, and we heard the first estimated death toll; at which point the only other passenger in the van began to weep. And didn’t stop.

I didn’t know her. I hope she’s okay.

I can say much the same about Christchurch.