The hieroglyphics spray-painted on cars and buildings by search and rescue teams, telling their colleagues when they searched here, and what they found.
Then came the tales of ordinary people doing extraordinarily heroic things, or working selflessly for the benefit of their fellow humans, and of the ratbags taking advantage, thinking only of themselves.
And, of course, the tragic loss of life.
These things were all common to the Canterbury quakes, and the aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle.
But the parallels to be drawn between the earthquakes of 2010-2011, and the cyclone disaster of 2023 can be summed up for me by one particular image.
It was the sight of a group of very muddy teenagers walking up my street, carrying shovels.
These teens were barely in primary school when the Student Volunteer Army suddenly appeared as if from nowhere, to dig out the silt-bound eastern suburbs of Christchurch.
Yet here they were again.
Rationally, you know they are different kids, in a different place, in a different disaster.
But they look now just as they did then, doing the same job with the same sense of purpose and the same community spirit.
And the message they brought with them to those most afflicted by the tragedy of Cyclone Gabrielle was also the same: You don’t have to deal with this on your own.
The Christchurch quakes were an urban disaster, destroying the central city and some inner-city suburbs while leaving the city hinterland and the rural areas relatively undamaged.
Although some city streets were flooded in Cyclone Gabrielle, the Hawke’s Bay rural communities have taken the biggest hits.
It will take time to recover. The lesson of Christchurch, sadly, is that it will take a lot longer than people realise.
In Christchurch, the rebuild was slowed down by bureaucracy, red tape, a disconnect between local and central government, and hassles with insurers and EQC.
The problems ahead for those rebuilding from the damage of Cyclone Gabrielle are yet to be revealed. But it is unlikely to be plain sailing.
In that knowledge, Christchurch taught us that people need to reach out to others, to help and be helped, which is sometimes more difficult.
In coming to terms with the “new normal”, it is (as the adverts for helplines tell us) okay not to feel okay. And it is always okay to seek assistance and support.
There are also questions to be raised about how to prepare for another event in future because something like this is bound to happen again.
My reason for saying that is simply that it has happened before.
“At Eskdale, a large concrete house, providing an obstruction to the flow of the flood waters, was completely silted up to the window sills. Another was torn off its piles and twisted around by the force of the flood and left to face in an entirely new direction.”
Those words were not written in 2023, but after a flood in 1938. History repeats.
Why do you think stop banks were built alongside Hawke’s Bay’s rivers in the first place?
In recent days, there has been talking of a “managed retreat” from areas that have proved particularly vulnerable to natural disasters.
This, of course, happened after the Christchurch earthquakes.
Thousands of houses were destroyed or demolished in a “residential red zone” in eastern Christchurch. An area four times the size of Hagley Park was emptied of houses and is now reverting to nature.
Similarly, hard questions may need to be asked about some Hawke’s Bay communities, or at least how to remediate the risk of staying where you are.
But people have short memories. Before this week, few people could tell you about the Esk Valley flood of 1938.
In Christchurch, few people knew that the top of the cathedral spire had been felled by earthquakes twice in the past.
So, it is possible that people will rebuild the best they can and carry on, bearing the risk of future disruption.
In a sense, that is one way of dealing with living in New Zealand, any part of which is prone to quakes, floods and storms. We calculate that we will get away with it not happening to us within our lifetime.
But as the climate changes, our environment becomes more dynamic and unpredictable.
And, as Christchurch and now Hawke’s Bay have shown us, nature will not be stopped.
