Earthquakes don’t kill people — buildings do. And those lovely decorative bits are the first to fall

News of Melbourne’s earthquake on Wednesday made my left leg hurt. That’s the leg I nearly lost.

On February 22, 2011, there were nine of us on a red bus from Sumner to Canterbury University in Christchurch. At 12.51, the unreinforced brick facade of 605 Colombo Street crushed our bus and four…