FileMaker Weetbicks

A Message for FM Weetbicks Readers

April 18, 2011 By Daniel

It has been a stressful last 8 months for everyone here in Christchurch since a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck on the morning of September 4th of last year, and subsequent aftershocks continue to fray the nerves.

On February 22nd, a magnitude 6.3 quake hit the city of Christchurch causing widespread, significant damage, and loss of life. The effect was much worse than the first large quake, and a number of factors such as proximity to the city, ground acceleration, and the time of day upon which it struck all led to one of the worst disasters in New Zealand's history.

Christchurch is now in a phase of demolition with the central business district in lockdown since the quake. Over 200 buildings have been earmarked for demolition, most of them in the CBD deemed too dangerous to be entered and beyond repair. While it is sad to see a number of our historic buildings damaged and torn down, the people of Christchurch are amazingly resilient and will rebuild the city to be better than ever

----

Digital Fusion was right in the middle of the action with our offices located in the central CBD. Being on the 6th floor of our building we felt the full effect and fortunately we all made it out of the situation safely.

To give you an idea of what it was like at the office that day and how powerful the earthquake was, here is an eight minute video clip shot by a small group of DF employees who were granted access back into the building to retrieve important items.

----

In the days and weeks following the earthquake, myself and Digital Fusion received a number of messages of support and wishes from FM Weetbicks readers via twitter, facebook, e-mail and so on. The show of support was overwhelming and we were all very humbled by this.

I wanted to thank everyone for their words of encouragement and support in this time. It's great to know we have such loyal friends and readers of the blog, and friends of Digital Fusion in general.

While the frequency of article entries may have slowed in the last couple of months, I hope to start writing again more frequently. It can be tough sometimes trying to come up with ideas of articles, but it's a challenge I enjoy :) Hey, I may even finally rope one of the other Digital Fusion developers into writing an article... one day maybe... dreams are free!

Kind Regards,
Daniel

... I know what you're thinking, and no this photo was not staged, this is how we work now :)