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It's been 10 months since the first big earthquake struck New Zealand's second-largest city. It's been nearly five months since a far more devastating one killed 181 people and crippled the downtown. But it's been just a few hours since yet another aftershock startled Christchurch residents during the night.
"I stop breathing," said Sheridan Cattermole, a bartender and a mom. "I get pins and needles all over. I either freeze or run. I just want things to be back to what they were like this time last year. I had my vege garden, and my sunflowers."
Seismologists have recorded 7,500 earthquakes in Christchurch since September - an average of more than 20 a day. The rumblings are rattling the psyche of the still-battered city. They have left the land under thousands of homes unsafe to build on. Some people have left town entirely. Yet many have proven resilient, and some now see a reconstruction boom on the horizon.
Christchurch is the disaster that the world forgot. When the deadly quake toppled the iconic Cathedral spire and flattened buildings in this city of 390,000, people around the globe paid attention. But two weeks later, the massive earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 20,000 in Japan took center stage.
In New Zealand, the events in Christchurch continue to reverberate.
In a country of 4 million, the cost of the quakes - estimated at more than $12 billion - amounts to eight percent of the country's annual economic output. Compare that to Hurricane Katrina, whose costs were less than 1 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. Christchurch will likely eclipse the Japan disaster in cost per person.
And nobody knows if the worst is over. Not even the experts.
