The Day That Changed My Life Page #4

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and that's-that's my name,

so I turned around, and I realised that she

was a really close family friend of mine,

and I hadn't recognised her,

because her nose was,...

to put it graphically, hanging off her face,

and she just-I couldn't tell it was her.

And she remembered a bit of building coming down,

and she explained it as being squashed like a staple.

I sat behind her and I tried to...

to support her so she

could breathe properly,

but I could hear from her breathing

that there was blood in her lungs,

and that's when I started to cry.

It became real when I saw her

injured, because she was real to me.

She wasn't just someone I was documenting. She

wasn't someone I was writing about in my notepad.

She was Jane Taylor, she was one of my best

friend's mothers, and she was gravely injured.

Dan, we need an ambulance.

Yeah, OK, hang on.

Can you-? Can we get

Jane an ambulance?

I'm trying. I'm trying.

And she had all her ribcage broken, one of

her lungs punctured, her pelvis broken,

her neck fractured,

a skull fracture.

And then Shane Tomlin,

he got pulled out,

and he was making that same

inhuman groaning noise,

and you can just tell that

there's something seriously wrong.

And then Jane lost consciousness, and they had to

choose between taking Jane or Shane to hospital,

and at that point, Shane was still making

these noises, but Jane was unconscious.

It... I mean, you know,

they-rock and a hard place, really,

but they got Jane there and flew her

straight to Wellington Hospital.

Uh, obviously, it's a scene of utter

devastation, as we had everything on our side

at the last earthquake, in terms of the timing in

the middle of the night, when people weren't around.

It's been the polar

opposite this time.

While we are doing everything we possibly can, I

wanna give people an absolute reassurance that, um,

we're dispatching as many people as we can. We've

got about 180 police working on the ground here,

200 extra police coming in, 350 military

people, with another 250 on their way.

I don't think we can, uh, go past the fact

that we may well be witnessing NZ's darkest day.

We had a list of people that had been made contact

with, and they were trapped on the second floor.

And it was just, basically,...

smashing concrete.

There was probably an hour and a half to two

hours to break through on the first floor.

We broke through, Tony and I dropped

down, and it was just absolute mayhem.

And the first thing I saw was...

two black shoes,

and I just naturally thought, 'Yep, that's the

first person we're gonna get out alive, ' and...

Tony shook his legs, and he said to

me, 'Oh, mate, he's not looking too good, '

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