Paul Holmes: Nation reels from ripple effects

It was the earthquake New Zealanders have been told for years to expect. Photo / Pam Johnson

Earthquakes. Man, they're freaky, awful things. And the one in Christchurch yesterday was horrendous.

I got up early expecting to do my normal Saturday ZB programme, checked the iPad and saw that it might be all on.

And we spent the morning covering events in Christchurch from every angle.

What was gripping, well, chilling, was the way in which the extent and the depth of the damage revealed itself.

Suddenly, here it was. The earthquake New Zealanders have been told for years to expect. And Christchurch got it.

Not Wellington. Not Hawke's Bay. I didn't even know Christchurch was a major earthquake risk. Did anyone?

The Prime Minister seemed to indicate that this particular fault line wasn't thought to be any great worry. So much for that.

People phoned ZB and told stories of the terror they endured just after 4.30 yesterday morning.

Mike Yardley at Newstalk ZB in Christchurch said it was like a mad jackhammer in the house.

Someone else compared it to a washing machine when the clothes are crooked and it starts slamming up and down.

And it went on. There isn't much doubt about that. Mike Yardley was emphatic. He reckoned it lasted a couple of minutes. It's hard to tell with quakes.

They invariably seem longer because you want them gone and they are so frightening and weird and foreign and mad.

I grew up with earthquakes. Mum and Dad both went through what they always called the Hastings Earthquake. Before I went to school I knew that Dad had been to war and that the Hastings Earthquake was terrible and everything fell down and people died.

If you come from anywhere in New Zealand apart from Hastings, you will know it as the Napier Earthquake.

I tell you this. If ever Hastings went to war with the entire country and with every nation in the world and we were under siege, the password by which a patriot might be admitted within the city walls would most surely be "Hastings Earthquake", because that way we would know you came from Hastings.

Mum hated earthquakes and you get a couple a year in Hawke's Bay. I've had one bad one there in the years since I started going back there. It was seven or eight years ago. I had taken a week off. We'd just finished the landscaping and things were looking beautiful.

It was a golden day in late spring. The air was crisp and still. It was late afternoon. At five o'clock I poured a glass of red and looked out to the west through the big glass room we'd built. It was the start of the sunset. Late afternoon, start of sunset. Beautiful. Peace on earth.

Suddenly there was great jolting of rocks in my skull. Like boulders were being pushed round. That's what it felt like. That's how my Dad told me his stroke started. Dammit, I thought in a flash. Now it's happening to me.

Then I noticed that other things were shaking, things outside my head. More than shaking. Shaking isn't tough enough. Rocking. Like the ground, the house, the entire farm in front of me rocking left to right.

And the roar. It's the noise I remember, too. Old radio man, you see. The noise. The roar. Like a Victor bomber was accelerating straight up from a hundred feet right outside the glass room. And the glass room itself.

I'll never forget the vibration, the roaring vibrations off the glass panels. Mad. I ran outside. Not supposed to, I was always taught. But I was out of there. With the bottle of wine. I don't think I ever drank a bottle so quickly as I did at the neighbours' that afternoon.

And that earthquake didn't ever get reported. It was just another day in the Bay. It was nothing. No one I know in Hawke's Bay ever talks about it. I'll never forget it.

Christchurch must have been hell.

WHICH MAKES me feel a heel about saying anything negative about our southern brothers and sisters, but like so many other people, I am very angry about the expensive farce that is South Canterbury Finance.

What a filthy rat we've all had to swallow there. And what contemptible ingratitude we've heard from the south. On radio the other day I heard the voice of some South Canterbury rooster, either an investor or one of the blind Allan Hubbard disciples, declaring in an edgy voice that if Bill English wanted a fight, well, he'd give him one.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Why would Bill English want a fight? And how dare this rooster suggest a fight? What in God's name was that attitude about? Mr English had just written these losers a cheque for $1.7 billion and one of that crowd was suggesting if Bill English wanted a fight he should come and get it.

Man, where was the gratitude? Silly finance company losers and we bailed them out and they're talking defiance. Talk about crazy.

That entire South Canterbury affair has been amazing to watch. Timaru has become a cult city, a financial Jonestown, led to its destruction not by the Reverend Jones but by the great man Allan Hubbard. That's what it looks like from here.

It's like everyone thinks that old coot is Moses and the sea will part and he will lead them back to their money. It's been sickening to watch the demonstrations in the street, hundreds of hapless, gullible people angry at the temerity, the blasphemy of Government sending in the official agencies, the preposterousness of anyone daring to think that Hubbard and his men were anything short of Jesus.

He doesn't fool me, that old boy. I look at those eyes and I see the shrewdest eyes I ever saw. Anyway, the bloke's not right all round. Anyone who makes hundreds of millions and still drives a silly old Volkswagen and lives in a shoebox is not right.

Anyway, the Timaru Jesus turned out to be just another good old finance company boy.

God, I detest them all, finance companies. I detest the people who start them, the suckers who invest in them and the creeps such as Hotchin and Watson and Bryers and all the other wide boys with the flash cars and the tarts and the designer watches. They all get found out in the end.

They make nothing and produce nothing. They clip the ticket and some may swallow it whole.

In the final analysis, the finance sharks start with nothing and end up with everything. The customer starts with something and ends up with nothing.

And this time, we have to pay the $1.7bn. And some prick down there wonders if we want a fight? You betcha we do. And what's more the company took us for a ride. The moment we protected their money under the deposits guarantee scheme they got even more cavalier with it.

They didn't have to give a damn where it got invested because they knew they'd get it back with interest. Man, that sucks. Auckland bars, indeed.

Hey, South Canterbury boy, how were you ever going to make money owning Auckland bars? Been here lately? Seen how many flash bars there are in Auckland? Wanna fight, sunshine?