All is as well as can be hoped for - no deaths, only a handful of serious injuries, and I believe the search & rescue teams haven't had to extract many people. There were, however, nine people killed in a plane crash.
I was actually awake when this happened, my cat having woke me 15 minutes prior, demanding to be fed. It started off as a bit of shake, but intensity grew quickly and the house was shaking around quite violently. After the peak, the shaking tailed off slowly. Initial aftershocks were violent, but short. There have been a lot of minor tremors throughout the day, everybody is sort of getting used to them now.
My house sustained no damage, a few things fell off shelves but nothing broke.
Most residential/suburban damage around Christchurch was to old brickwork, which typically meant toppled chimneys, though some older firewalls were also damaged. One house I saw was missing it's entire eastern wall, and some older blocks of shops sustained damage. There was a bit of liquefaction, though for the most part it wasn't serious. I did see one garage which was on about a 30 degree tilt.
The central city is cordoned off, as there was quite a bit of damage there. Again, this is mostly to do with older buildings, which were built before people cared about earthquakes. There is talk of a 7pm-7am curfew (its 6.30pm now), though I'm not sure if this just covers the central city, or everything. Regardless, a local liquor store was open, so I'm set for the night.
Roads aren't bad for the most part, though there are areas which been hit kind of hard.
Power was cut to most of the city and a good chunk of the surrounding area, though its been mostly restored now. I understand this is mostly related to power transformers' fire protection systems being falsely trigger by the quake, something to do with oil spilling around inside them. It came back on here sometime between now and three hours ago, some houses are still without power and some never went without. Phones have been largely unaffected.
I've heard there were a few looters in the CBD shortly after it happened, these will have been people on the way home from a night on the lash.
I don't have a lot of photos, though all of the ones floating around online are fairly accurate.
So yer...not a lot of damage all things considered. Go go building codes!
