A Lyttelton Port worker who was more than 50 metres up in the air, on a one metre-wide platform, when a large aftershock struck yesterday was back up there an hour later to finish his job.
Norman Eyre, 44, along with a 24-year-old apprentice, had just climbed up a crane at the port to repair damage caused in Saturday's quake when the 5.1 magnitude tremor hit shortly before 8am.
"We got to the top platform, had a huff and puff and put down all our gear, and then the whole thing started violently shaking," he told NZPA today.
"We would've been 50 or 60 metres in the air, and the platform is about one metre by about two feet, so we could have fallen off."
Mr Eyre said neither he nor his colleague knew immediately what had happened.
"We sort of looked at each other and thought 'gee, is that an earthquake or has something hit us?'," he said.
"We were looking down and could see cracks opening up even further. One of the vehicles tried to leave and he actually fell down one of the cracks."
However, the shake was not enough to keep them from their job. After coming down for an hour while the port was evacuated, the pair climbed back up to resume work.
"A couple of people said to me 'don't you feel a bit shaky going back up', but, you know, we've been living between the shakes since Saturday," Mr Eyre said.
Lyttelton Port chief executive Peter Davie said the quake had caused a fair amount of unease among staff.
"They are nervous and understandably so, but we keep putting our engineering staff in front of them and reinforcing that the structures there are built to withstand these type of things."
Mr Davie said the estimated cost of the damage to the port was $50 million.
"For us, the port is about months and years of restoration work, there's no quick fixes for a lot of the work."
