Hi All
Yes, it has been an interesting time over the last day back home. For the most part, there have been very minimal injuries, the only 2 reported major injuries being a bloke getting hit by a chimney and is in the HDU (intensive care), and another bloke getting badly cut by broken glass. Considering, for an entire city, 2 injuries is amazing!
I have been in contact with a lot of people down there, and for the most part, in the subburbs (excluding New Brighton), things aren't as bad as they could be. There is mostly cosmetic damage. Most of the homes that were damaged badly have featured in the media, other than that, the majority is fine. Kaiapoi (about 10 km nth of Christchurch) was hit pretty hard also.
Both Christchurch and Kaiapoi's CBD's have had a real hammering. This is mainly the older buildings (80 years plus) that have been effected. In most cases, as a lot of these buildings have had the internals updated, it is only the facade that has fallen off, but leaving the internal structure intact. Other buildings with major structural damage are Churches and such like, that have been about for the last 100-150 years.
There has been a huge sense of community shown by all Cantabrians during one of the region's darkest hours. It has been truly amazing the stories of support and help that I've been told and heard in the media. Everything from a neighbor looking after children while people clean up their houses, to entire streets banding together just to make sure that everyone in their neighborhood had food, water and shelter (from the sounds of things, street wide bar-b-que's have been a common site).
I hope this helps give a better picture of what is happening.
Cheers
Rob