Helping the community in Christchurch

Brent Christoffersen joined The Salvation Army’s earthquake relief team in the week after the Christchurch earthquake.

I work for The Salvation Army in Hutt City as Family Ministries Coordinator. It’s a broad role, working with the community and the church. It’s really about finding ways to connect people to the next step—’cause everyone’s on a journey and not all our next steps are the same. I love my job because I love being able to work with people.

I was really blasé about the Christchurch earthquake at first. I did care, but there was other stuff going on for me. Then our church held an urgent prayer meeting. I went home from that, watched TV and said to a mate, ‘Let’s go, we have to do something!’ I really wanted to get down there once I saw how bad it was.

I’m petrified of earthquakes and flying, but I prayed, ‘God, if you want me to get down there, help me find a way.’ And that’s when I heard that The Salvation Army was asking for volunteers. My church said, ‘Go!’

I was part of the second deployment. At our briefing they said, ‘You might think you’re quite tough, but by the end of the week you could be finding things hard.’ We were told it was okay to leave early if it got too much for us.

Going into the affected communities and seeing buildings that were destroyed and all the liquefaction was terrible. Me and another guy were walking one day when the EQC inspector who was with us said, ‘You might want to move …’ We were under a building awning and he pointed out that if there was an aftershock it would just collapse on us.

The first day I went door to door in Ferrymead, checking on lots of people. The second day I was part of a flying squad that stayed longer with people. I was with Fiona, a social worker from Auckland, and she was incredible with people! She always had something to offer. We drove around to reach people who needed help and I remember seeing the devastation. It was so serious!

I felt that walking around and knocking on doors was where I could be most useful, so I went back to that. I was also part of a team based at Aranui, which was rugged as.

Most people were just stoked to see The Salvation Army. I explained that we were doing brief assessments to find out what people needed and that EQC and other people with us would check that their houses were safe to live in. Some people would say, ‘We’re fine’, but others said, ‘It’s so good to see you here—you’re the first people to come around.’

I took bottles of water to a guy in a wheelchair who couldn’t leave his house. I visited an old lady in her 70s, and there were blankets under her dining room table—that was where she was sleeping. Another old lady who was on oxygen was really scared in case her power stopped. I asked her neighbour to keep an eye on her. One lady said that every time a truck went by her house it was like another earthquake. Her nerves were shot.

The welfare of people’s heads and emotional state is going to be a key need now. A guy told me he’d seen a building with three workers on it, and when the earthquake happened, the building just exploded on them. They got out, but those memories are there for that guy and they won’t ever go away. I think the Army needs to keep on caring, especially with counselling and support.

We can’t neglect our people and our communities. We’re not the biggest country in the world, but we’ve got enough people to get down there and help.

Donate to the ‘Canterbury Earthquake Appeal’

• Freephone: 0800 53 00 00
• By Post: ‘The Salvation Army, PO Box 27 001 Marion Square, Wellington 6141, New Zealand’
• By Direct Credit: BNZ 02-0568-0091726-02
  
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