My wife and I spent a few days in Christchurch on our honeymoon six or so years ago. Very pretty city, wonderful people. Very sad to see what they're going through. The pictures of the collapsed tower at the cathedral are particularly poignant to me, as I remember my visit to that plaza vividly.

We stayed on the twelth (top) floor of the Holiday Inn Christchurch. Not, I would imagine, a great place to be during a quake. Of course, we had other things on our minds at the time and did not even consider the issue.

With all that is going on around the world right now, we're all getting lots of opportunity to armchair quarterback survival situations - some, sadly, more appropriate for Zombie Squad than ETS (see Libya).

Let's learn all we can to keep ourselves and our families safe, but not forget that there is tremendous suffering going on angst real people. I wish there were more I could do to help.