It was early afternoon on February 22, 2011, when news that Christchurch had been hit by a massive earthquake reached Stuart Kilduff. The operations manager for energy provider Orion New Zealand, Kilduff was attending an emergency services conference in Wellington, 440 km away from where the tragedy was unfolding.
“The place was full of emergency services people, civil defence, army, you name it,” he recalls. “They all went running for the door but I said to my boss ‘look, there’s no point going anywhere because the airport will be closed’.”