"The rescue crews were opening up voids and we were hoping they would find people in there.
"How neat would that have been.
"Another guy said to me he expected to see an arm waving from the next void."
But the only activity that night was the recovery of a body.
"That was good in a way.
"At least it was closure for one family," Mrs Paterson, a 20-year St John veteran, said yesterday.
She and her partner Malcolm Flett, team leader at the Milton station, were two of 20 St John staff from Dunedin, Gore, Te Anau, Winton Queenstown, Milton and Mosgiel who volunteered to go to Christchurch to help colleagues overwhelmed after Tuesday's earthquake.
They returned home on Sunday night, Mrs Paterson moved by the "strength, determination and guts" of Christchurch residents, keenly aware of the enormous task required to clean up and rebuild the ravaged city, and immensely proud of people's willingness to pitch in.
"It was heart-warming to see everyone pulling together ... it makes you want to do more."
She and Mr Flett had finished their respective shifts on Tuesday and were due for days off when they heard about the earthquake.
"How could we go on leave? "We wanted to do something to help," she said.
They were on the road at 7am the next day, sleeping in an ambulance that night because all the beds were full at base camp (the St John youth camp at Waddington, northwest of the city near Darfield).
They did not work together again in Christchurch.
Staff from outside the city were paired with Christchurch staff.
Mrs Paterson did not work on Thursday, spent Friday at the Civil Defence headquarters at the Christchurch art gallery, and Saturday night at the PGC building.
Others evacuated the injured and rest-home patients, visited people at home and manned welfare centres.
At Civil Defence headquarters, Mrs Paterson was asked to help returning rescue teams sign the personnel register.
"They were coming out too tired to find the page where they had signed in and write their names.
"One man wrote his name and needed assistance to write '10.45'.
He couldn't physically remember how to write it he was so traumatised and exhausted."
At Waddington, the community rallied round to cope with the sudden influx of 400 people, she said.
"They [St John] were wondering how to feed us all, but after two phone calls car upon car arrived ... loaded with food and baking and vegetables.
The local women cooked for us and the kids helpfully washed the dishes.
"When we got up at quarter to five, there was a hot breakfast for us before we started our shifts.
When we got back there was a hot dinner for us and they had already cooked a dinner earlier in the day for ones on camp.
"On the second night they had a meeting at the local pub and the lady running the camp said to put our dirty clothes out and the ladies in the community would wash them for us and bring them back.
"They were just absolutely amazing."
Strangers spontaneously brought coffee and food to emergency workers in the central city too, she said.
"Some of the guys went over to [a] Subway to get food.
"The Subway people told them to bring their vehicles over and they filled them up.
"People want to be doing something."
Mrs Paterson said nothing she saw on television or in newspapers prepared her for the reality of the devastation of Christchurch.
"Take what you see and multiply it by 50.
"The CDB has been totally annihilated ... it will never be an inner city again, I don't think."
The rebuilding process would be "massive", she said, "too large to even comprehend".
Pleased to be home with hot water, shower, toilet and no aftershocks, Mrs Paterson said she felt for Christchurch residents, including several members of her family whose homes were either destroyed or seriously damaged.
"We're out of this in a couple of weeks, but they're living with it for months.
"Some of them haven't got over the first earthquake in September ... they're going to be traumatised for years.
"Maybe some will never get over it."
