They were partying, working, sleeping - then came 90 minutes of terror they will never forget. This is their story.
DISASTER STRIKES
4.36am is the no man's land of shift workers, drunks and ghosts.
Simon Chick, 20, has just left Calendar Girls strip club after a night out with his mates, brothers Chase and Brad Evison.
They are celebrating Chase's imminent departure for Hong Kong and are worse for wear.
As they roll up Manchester St in search of food, they hear a rumble coming down the road.
"It built up slowly, like the sound of a tank rolling in," Chick says.
"Then it started shaking real hard. We went to the middle of the road. We grabbed some people who were standing under awnings and got them away."
A few blocks away at the Stock Exchange bar on Cashel St, Dave Bain, 37, was in the toilets, washing his hands.
"There was a chick in the loos because the ladies was full. I was giving her a bit of stick about being there."
The music was loud and they didn't hear a rumble but then the ground started moving.
"She said, 'Someone's shaking the toilet', and I said, 'No honey, it's an earthquake'."
"When I got out on the street there was complete blackness and debris everywhere. People were standing around. It was a shock because I didn't think it was that big."
Hadley Weir is walking out of Bourbon Street bar, after a birthday party. But his friend has forgotten her handbag. He pauses while she goes back for it.
"I just walked outside as the quake happened," he says. "I didn't know what the hell was going on, it was scary. I got under the door and held onto the walls, the noise was incredible. I was thrown all around the place."
Just metres away, bricks topple from a building on to his parked BMW. If not for the left-behind handbag ...
In Fendalton, taxi driver David Palmer waits for passengers. "When you're sitting in a good car with good shocks and you start violently rocking, it's a strange feeling."
In Addington, Aucklanders Ian and Moira Ronalds are shaken awake in their motel room. "We were lying there and our bed was swaying sideways for at least half a minute," says Ian, 70. "My wife was frightened."
The retired Air Force engineer and his wife tell each other, "I love you", hold each other and wait.
At the epicentre in Darfield, Daryl Collier is working in the South Terrace bakery when the building begins to shake and a roar engulfs him. "The railway line is behind us and I thought it was a train coming right through the back of the building."
NIGHT TERRORS
Like a tank, like a train, like a hurricane. Everyone has their way of describing the impact.
Student Laura Hall, 19, screams then curls in a foetal position under her bedcovers. "It seemed like it went on forever," she says.
Her mother, lab technician Louise Chappell, runs down the stairs, oblivious to shattered glass candlesticks under her bare feet.
Marsha Witehira, 30, wakes in terror as the wall next to her bed collapses, raining bricks. Her friend Tama Wharepapa, who had been sleeping in the lounge, runs and pulls her by the feet from harm's way. "It just missed my head," she says. "I'm very lucky to be alive."
Chris Bond and his wife Erin run to the bedroom doorway, where they can see their five-month-old son Liam in his cot. As they watch, a shelf full of books above Liam's head topples forward. The books fall around Liam. Not a hair on his head is touched.
Julie Anderson is at Christchurch Airport, checking in for a flight to Brisbane. "The lights went out and it was very dark," she says. "People were screaming, panicking, running to get outside. The bottles in the duty free store were all falling to the ground and smashing, too."
At the Kaiapoi motorcamp craters open in the ground and caravans sink to their axles. Near Rangiora, a farmer gathers his family in the same room to spend what he fears will be their last moments together.
RUMBLING ENDS
As soon as the earthquake passes, City Care gardener David Goy throws on a visibility vest and goes to central Manchester St to direct traffic.
"I just ran out to help. There were heaps of drunk people trying to direct people," he says.
Chick and the Evison brothers, sobering up fast, think they can hear people calling out from a collapsed building 100m away.
They crawl over the rubble, mindful that part of the building was being held up by one pillar, when a brick falls from above.
"I got a gash on the head," says Chick. "It didn't hurt. Chase got a first-aid kit and dressed it up."
Westerly Gillespie leaves her coastal South Brighton home. The Boxing Day tsunami is raw in her mind, and she wants to get to the Port Hills but there are 20cm gashes in the road. It is terrifying.
"There were nutters tearing down the side of the road and overtaking at ridiculous speeds," she says.
THE FALLOUT
As the sun rises on a changed city, crowds gather quietly. Connon Daly, his partner Irina and 11-year-old son Dhaunya buy bottled water from a 24-hour store. A Sydenham dairy owner stays open, selling battery packs for just $2 and giving away milk cartons.
On the corner of Oxford Tce and Gloucester St, police apprehend a looter who has stolen a till and alcohol from a bar. With the traffic lights out, a Jeep Cherokee collides with another car at an intersection.
Property owner Dean Marshall makes his way through the CBD, inspecting his buildings. Half the roof of his home has collapsed. A two-storey brick building he owns on the corner of Worcester and Manchester Sts has collapsed. He turns on the radio, and it is playing normal music. "Nobody knew what to do," he says.
It is hours later, and Chappell notices that her feet are cut to pieces after running over the shattered candlesticks.
And, for many, it will be days and weeks before the realisation of what has happened sets in.
