Kate and Arthur Borduas had just started their walking tour of Christchurch, New Zealand — admiring the architecture, stained glass and devotional artwork of the Christchurch Cathedral — when the world came apart around them.
The ground heaved beneath their feet, and the ceiling fell in chunks as a magnitude-6.3 earthquake assaulted the picturesque city.
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“I have read that it lasted only 15 seconds,” Kate Borduas said in an e-mail over the weekend. “It felt like an eternity. I had enough time to form a prayer thanking God that we were allowed to die together.”
Unlike many of the people in the cathedral that day, the Borduases did survive and were eventually ushered to a shelter. The experience was surreal and terrifying, but it left them with a deep sense of faith and gratitude for the friendship of strangers.
“I am brought to tears by the kindness and courage of the New Zealand people. To a person, they have been awesome,” Kate Borduas said. “They pulled together as a team to provide their guests shelter and comfort — even at tremendous personal cost.
“Would that the world had more New Zealanders,” she said. “It would be a more peaceful place.”
Borduas, a former Scarborough town councilor, and her husband, who recently retired from a Portland financial services company, left in January for an extended vacation to Australia and New Zealand. They brought Kate’s mother to celebrate her 80th birthday in Perth, Australia, where Kate’s brother lives.
They had to drive around wildfires that destroyed more than 60 homes, and they just missed Cyclone Bianca by a few days.
The couple had headed to New Zealand, drawn by its landscape and the charm of the New Zealanders they had encountered earlier. Arriving in Christchurch on Feb. 21, they beheld a beautiful city of elegant gray-stone architecture, attractive shops and alluring restaurants.
The next day, they began their tour of New Zealand’s second-largest city, its historic buildings and attractions.
Outside the cathedral, Kate Borduas was disturbed to see visiting schoolchildren climbing on a memorial to New Zealand soldiers lost in World War II.
Inside the cathedral, they bought tickets to a benefit chamber music concert in support of earthquake relief, related to a September earthquake that hit 25 miles away. Their ticket stub from the purchase read 12:41 p.m. The earthquake hit at 12:51 p.m.
The couple had entered the nave and were admiring the Maori weavings and memorials as they made their way around its perimeter. Kate Borduas said there were about 40 people in the nave, including some kneeling in prayer, an Anglican nun and a group of women discussing Bible studies.
The disrespect to the war monument still on her mind, Kate drifted into the cathedral’s Pacific Chapel. She was contemplating the similarities between her Christian theology and the aboriginal beliefs as her husband followed her into the chapel.
Then it hit.
“For the first second or two it was just the violent swaying and shaking. We dropped to the floor and Arthur threw himself on me. Then the tower came down,” Kate Borduas recalled.
“It is hard to compare anything to the noise of it. We each thought that maybe it was a bomb,” she said.
“I could see the large chunks falling just behind Arthur into the nave. We were being hit by chunks of falling rock the size of small fruit perhaps.” The chapel was close to the tower, though, outside the gothic arches supporting the cathedral ceiling.
“The roar, the crash, the debris and the shaking went on and on,” Kate said. When the shaking stopped, they followed a person out an emergency exit. A violent aftershock hit.
“Buildings around us were in various states of destruction — from completely down to hardly damaged,” Kate said. Thirty minutes later, police started evacuating the area. That’s when the couple rounded the cathedral and saw the quake had toppled the tower and steeple and partially collapsed the roof.
They learned later that at least 20 people were presumed dead in the rubble.
The couple walked toward the Botanical Gardens, taking in sights that were to have been part of the tour and were now damaged. The city’s beautiful statues had toppled.
They had their passports, wallets and raincoats. They were covered in stone dust and had inhaled it, and now they were parched and could find no water.
The Borduases and several hundred others were directed initially to a park, but liquefaction — in which earthquakes cause soil to act like a liquid — had left the park unsafe.
They were sent to a shed, built for an upcoming flower show, that had been converted to a shelter by the New Zealand civil defense, Salvation Army and Red Cross. Volunteers collected pallets for a floor. They were issued blankets, and later in the night were given a yoga mat to sleep on.
It was cold and damp, and aftershocks continued through the night.
“Numbers of New Zealand citizens came in and invited us to their homes. We declined in order that elderly or young families might get the shelter,” Kate said.
The next day, a Hercules transport plane took the couple to Wellington. They were some of the lucky ones, getting hotel beds donated by Microsoft that became available just as they were being processed.
The Borduases have resumed their excursion, setting out on the Milford Track hike near Queenstown. They learned that the hotel they had been staying in and their belongings were spared, and they will be able to return for them.
Kate Borduas said the experience has left her deeply grateful.
“Such a random series of events and feelings drew me to and kept me in the chapel. Luck or providence. We’ll never know,” she said. “I know that we have been given the gift of the rest of our lives and will offer prayers of thanksgiving each day.”
Staff Writer David Hench can be contacted at 791-6327 or at:
dhench@pressherald.com
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