Mavis Pattison didn't want to leave her home after the Christchurch earthquake. Photo / Alan Gibson
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For four days, 102-year-old Mavis Pattison refused to leave her quake-damaged cottage even as firefighters warned it could collapse around her.
The house - at 100 years, almost as old as her - was designated a "hot zone" by the Fire Service on Tuesday, enabling emergency workers to evacuate Pattison.
But she only went, she said, because she did not want to make her local firemen feel bad.
Last weekend's 7.1 magnitude shock left deep cracks along the two concrete retaining walls of Pattison's Sumner cottage, and the front porch on a lean.
But the spritely centenarian stubbornly refused to leave, despite the urgings of friends and neighbours.
Neighbour Mark Dally, who has known Pattison since he was a boy, said she was not happy when told she couldn't stay in her home.
"I thought I'd have to use a crowbar to lever her out of there ... she did not want to go," he said.
She told him: "I'm staying, I'm in God's hands."
Pattison only agreed to leave, finally, when Dally asked her to think about how the firefighters would feel if anything happened to her.
"If I hadn't been able to talk her around the firemen would have had to carry her out."
Friend Dave Louw, who owns Project Partner Builders, spent five hours fitting steel poles to each end of Pattison's cottage to brace it, and to stop the outer walls falling over on to the neighbours' houses.
He said the bracing would not stop the cottage collapsing altogether, but would keep residents on either side safe.
Pattison is now staying at the Redcliffs Rest Home, a couple of minutes up the road from her house. She is keen to get home but is unsure how long it will take to repair her house.
"I'd sooner be at home," she told the Herald on Sunday. "They cook nice meals here, but you get into your own routine at home."
She was dozing when the quake hit early last Saturday. "My house just shook. I didn't think much about it, but I know I didn't like it. I'm coming down to earth now.
"It churns your stomach up. I'm not used to those things at all. I can't describe how it felt ... it seemed to come from your feet upwards. I was a bit scared to move."
Pattison moved into the cottage in 1974 when her mother died.
"My mother lived there and when she died at 80 I sold my house in Lyttelton and moved into hers. Now, I'm older than the house," she said with a grin.
