Earthquake photography

And now I know why a plane kept making passes over our house shortly after the quake. High res aerial photography that's now been uploaded as a layer for Google Maps. Very nicely done. And if you hit this spot, you can see me driving our old blue Rav 4 away from where I'd abandoned it late in the afternoon of the 22nd. Traffic was entirely stopped, and I had no way to tell if the other bridges were open or closed [turns out they were all closed]. So I left the car on the side of the road and hiked the rest of the way home.

If you hit the link then pan a bit south-east, you'll see why the bridge wasn't entirely serviceable. And the lake of sewage at the end of Bridge Street which I avoided by use of crafty woodsman skills through the park. Susan, who didn't have the benefit of a childhood spent mucking about in boggy parts of cattle pastures, ruined a pair of shoes in her trek through the woods [we'd commuted separately].

The image layer file is huge and so takes a long time to load up. So you get to watch the pre-quake image slowly be overtaken by squares of more dimly coloured quake pictures...a creeping doom.

Other highlights:

• The Arts Centre
• Triage tents at Latimer Square
• The row of shops on Manchester Street that once included the barber shop I frequented (have heard he's fine, thankfully)
• The ruined CTV building
• Sumner landslides
• What was Shag Rock
• Sand volcanoes in Sydenham Park
• Bexley's streets became rivers
• And of course the Cathedral, with Christchurch Press building just to the North-East (the one with the completely wrecked roof)
• One of the reasons I argued for gas price gouging. Check the queue here. Flip around. The gas stations without queues are generally the ones that are closed.
• Lyttelton Time Ball

Do note and link to others in the comments.

[Updated with links to faster pictures that seem to work better; thanks to Sally for the pointer.]