Timber Trail Center : Ongarue : Power went out

There are now three of us working under the direction of 'Steve the builder'. A nineteen year old student from England, a twenty-something French tool maker, and me.

We've been ripping doors out of walls, and cutting holes in other walls, and stuffing those doors into the new holes, and filling the first holes we made with new doors.
During the day there was a most excellent earthquake. I felt the building shudder and thought, 'that was a big gust of wind'!
Then thought, 'hang on, there isn't any wind blowing'?!?!

The power went out, and we still had a couple of hours left in the working day. We were fitting a new set of French doors to one of the rooms in the Wwoofer accommodation building.

We borrowed a generator from a neighbour across the road, to finish the work. During the remainder of the day we plugged into it's socket, drills, circular saws, water jugs, and mobile phones.

No power means no internet, so the only info we had on the earthquake was via people talking on the phone, or scuttlebutt from the neighbours. One of which reckoned that one of the volcanoes had blown it's top.

Had to give the genny back at end of day and neighbour plugged it straight into his water pump. He reckoned the power should have been on hours ago so he was getting prepared.
We could hear generators chugging away up and down the valley as we walked back to the property.

Since we had no idea when the power was coming back on, Martyn decided that getting the water pump going was a good plan.

We all trooped out to the shed where a brand new generator was found, hidden up the back amongst the bikes, tools, and car seats.

We tore the plastic off the bright yellow and black unit and dragged it out of the black interior into the evening light. I was impressed to see that the engine block was isolated with rubber bushes.

Realised the reason for the shock absorption, when we discovered that the engine was diesel. We only had cans of petrol stored on the property so had to borrow some fuel from the neighbour. Also impressed to see a battery so we didn't need to fuss with the rip cord.

Steve wasn't impressed with the genny. Seemed to think it was made in China, and that that was a bad thing. I remember when people said the same thing about things made in Japan.

Where do you reckon this genny was made?

The day was turning into the classic example of why you do your prep before a disaster.
A light rain was falling and the French Wwoofer took over and soon had the tanks filled and the little engine clattering away.
Cut the engine before dragging the unit across the compound to the water pump
We crawled around the piles under the church looking for the pump.
Just as we had dragged out the cable and hooked it up to the water pump, the power came back on.
All the lights in the buildings lit up, splashing illumination across the yard and highlighting the two grooves in the grass, cut as we dragged the genny across.