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The collapsed St John's Church in Latimer Square - Source: Fairfax -
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A tough few months got even tougher for the Stewart family yesterday after brothers Victor and Lauren got crushed and trapped inside St John's Church after the 5.6 aftershock.
The pair work for Stewart's Stained Glass, which is working on the damaged churches around the city, taking the pieces of stained glass out and preserving them for rebuilding.
The brothers were struck by a falling wall in the aftershock and Victor became trapped under the rubble. The force of the wall sent Lauren down inside the church.
Victor's partner, Hayley Buckfield, said the hour she spent trying to get to the pair in Latimer Square was one of the toughest of her life.
"I didn't know if they were dead of alive, how seriously injured they were," she said. "It was made to sound really bad."
Buckfield was alerted by her sister Emily in Auckland that her partner and his brother were trapped.
She said she was an "absolute mess" when she found out Victor had been buried and injured.
After a trip to Christchurch City Hospital, Buckfield discovered her partner was not there, but instead at an Accident and Emergency Centre on Colombo Street.
A social worker was assigned to her and organised and paid for her to taxi to find Victor.
Gridlocked traffic meant she spent nearly 45 minutes in the taxi waiting to hear of her partner's fate.
"It is very hard to describe how I was feeling," she said.
She tried not to let her thoughts wander back to February 22 when a 6.3 earthquake claimed the lives of 181 people.
"I was more focussed on the here and now, but I did think a little about February, I lost friends in that earthquake," she said.
Victor said the rubble pinned him to the ground and he could do nothing but call out for help.
"It felt pretty scary; it was total darkness, when I felt the quake I knew I was in a pretty bad place.
"I just wanted to get the bloody hell out of there," he said.
Luckily the men were not working alone and were rescued by their father Graham and a truck driver and medical assistant from a demolition company working nearby.
Victor said he is bruised and cut but did not suffer any broken bones. He also said the incident had left him pretty shaken.
He said he was just so relieved to get out and Buckfield agreed.
"Just a profound sense of relief," she said.
The first scare was followed by a second when a 6.3 magnitude quake struck at 2.20pm, Victor was receiving stitches at the time and describes the scene at the medical centre as pretty chaotic.
"I ended up getting my stitches in the car park."
And the close call at the church is not the first for Victor. He was meant to be working on the spire when the February 22 quake struck, but was running late for the job and did not make it into the city.
Buckfield lost friends in the February quake and her job but that has not dented her faith in Christchurch, the city she has lived in for 30 years.
She said she is "a Christchurch girl, through and through" and has no plans to leave.
And Victor shares the sentiment saying he could not imagine living anywhere else.
The bumps and bruises will keep the pair away from work for the rest of the week but they both plan to return to work on the city's "poor old churches".
And the family plans to continue just "getting on the best we can".
"In a crisis we really stick together," Wakefield said.
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