Brave teen put body on line

Rupert Scobie with Helen Grice. Photo / David Alexander

When the February earthquake struck Christchurch, Rupert Scobie, then 16, was staying at his aunt Helen Grice's Fendalton house.

Rupert's mother, Elizabeth Scobie, said her sister was cleaning the lounge the afternoon the quake hit.

Grice ran for the door but the chimney of her two-storey home tumbled, crushing and trapping her.

Rupert took charge of the scene and told his cousin, Grice's son Henry, then 15, to get help from builders who were working across the road.

While Henry sought help, Rupert cleared rubble and climbed under the chimney.

"The biggest challenge was when I tried to lift the chimney by myself," Rupert says. "I was nowhere near strong enough to budge it."

He placed his arms around his aunt, protecting her from the chimney's weight.

"I sort of crawled underneath it. I thought her legs would be in pieces or smashed. I tried to get underneath and drag her out."

The builders who arrived with Henry were in shock as they also tried lifting chunks of the chimney to free Grice.

"One guy was just crying. He didn't know what to do," Elizabeth Scobie says. "A couple of them lifted it but they couldn't get it up very high."

Eventually, the men prised the rubble off Grice with crowbars. Rupert placed frozen vegetable packets around her neck and spine.

He then ran outside to wave down passing cars. A doctor who was passing looked at the wreckage and said everybody should leave the house. "I just went back and helped my aunty," Rupert says. For almost three hours, as aftershocks rattled the fragile structure, Rupert comforted his aunt before an ambulance arrived.

The Scobies later learned Grice had been paralysed. Rupert visited her at Burwood Spinal Unit for months after the quake.

"It's devastating," Elizabeth Scobie says. "She just recently had another spell in hospital and they've diagnosed her as a diabetic."

Rupert said since he moved house and left school to work at a local supermarket it had been harder for him to visit Grice.

Elizabeth Scobie said it was time he received recognition for his actions on February 22.

"I thought something special might make him aware he did something that really mattered," she says. "People really cared about what he did."

Rupert and another person he nominates will fly to Hong Kong courtesy of Cathay Pacific and stay at the Courtyard by Marriott, with $500 spending money from the Herald on Sunday.