Aftershock

The Family from ‘Would You Survive?’

Brent Lewis and Cathy Sneyd thought they were pretty well-prepared for a disaster, until they were hit by one…  With kids Lizzy (17), Doug (14) and Sam (12), the family had done what many Kiwi families do – they’d bought a few bottles of water and a few extra tins of food, put them in a big box in the garage, and forgotten about it.

Over “the long weekend from hell” they received a wake-up call that they say has changed them for good.  Cold, wet, tired, thirsty and hungry, the family put their bodies on the line.

After the experience Brent wrote an article for his work newsletter.

This is Brent’s story:

It’s the middle of winter, you’re at work, then the earth violently shakes and within seconds you’re trapped in the building without power and without contact with friends and family.  How would you fare?

Recently I found out just how hard it is to survive for four days as part of making the documentary “Would You Survive?”

It started with a small advertisement in the paper, and several auditions later our family of five (usually six, but our eldest daughter was travelling overseas) was selected to take part in making a documentary putting a family through the realities of surviving a natural disaster.  The scenario was that Wellington has been struck by an earthquake of magnitude 8.2, similar to the 1855 Wairarapa earthquake  that caused tsunami waves, land slips and devastation of the young Wellington.

And so on a drizzly Friday morning we went about our usual routine, but with the difference of having film crews follow us around. My wife and I were at work in central Wellington, the kids at their various schools on the Kapiti coast 50km from us. Then the quake hit.

I was trapped in our building for around 24 hours. Thankfully our office was prepared with a well stocked emergency cabinet containing water, food, torches, blankets and equipment to enable me to self rescue. The worst part was not knowing how the rest of my family had survived. The older kids’ college is barely 1m above sea level, had there been a tsunami? The younger one has diabetes. Had he managed to rescue his blood testing kit and insulin supply? Cathy my wife should have been in Wellington with me. What had happened to her?

Our family plan has always been to assemble at our house, because there we have food, water and shelter. So, once freed from our building I started walking home, not knowing what I would find when I got there.

When I got home I found that some things were okay while most were worse than I feared with virtually all our emergency supplies trapped under the rubble of our house. For the next few days we struggled with the elements and lack of food and water while we tried to get through until help arrived. We only just made it from Friday to Monday, by then we were hungry, a bit dehydrated and very exhausted. Surviving burns lots of calories, calories we didn’t have.

What would we do now that is different? Well, our emergency supplies are far more accessible, and there’s a lot more of it. Surviving was much harder than we expected, and it wasn’t even a real event. And I have decent walking shoes and a good raincoat at the office.

Brent