"Where are you? We will get you out."
As men frantically worked to free Blenheim woman Karen Scott and her daughter from the rubble of what used to be her High St cafe, she could only hear her rescuers.
"Reach out your arms and we'll pull you out."
A pair of hands reached for hers and dragged her and her daughter back to the surface.
Her only thought after her rescue was the safety of a staff member still trapped by the roof of the cafe that had fallen during the violent shake.
"They [the men] were telling me I had to leave, but Tracey was still in there and I didn't know where she was," she said.
"They kept saying it was too dangerous, but I had to find her."
The three were busy preparing for the lunch time trade at Ms Scott's Ja-Basco Bar and Cafe when the earth began to shake.
Heavy bottles of spirits were "flying through the air like torpedoes" and everything else was "flying everywhere", she said.
She yelled at her daughter and Tracey to run toward part of the cafe which had been strengthened with steel beams, but they only managed to take three steps before the roof collapsed, some of which hit Ms Scott's head.
The group of men, who worked on the floor above the cafe, could not see Tracey or hear her because alarms were sounding.
They climbed onto the roof and tried entering the back door of the cafe but it was blocked, she said.
A hole in the roof gave the men their first sight of Tracey who was in a hole in the rubble and she too was pulled out.
All three were unhurt, although Ms Scott still had a bad headache and sore back when she spoke to the Marlborough Express on Friday.
Family members drove from Blenheim on Thursday to pick up Ms Scott, and her daughter and her daughter's young children.
The group would stay with family in Blenheim indefinitely, she said.
Her business had been lost to the rubble, but she said other families were worse off.
"I've got choices I can make. I'm alive and I can begin again," she said.
Ms Scott used to own Copper Bock bar in Blenheim, which is now Fairweathers on Scott.
- The Marlborough Express SIMON WONG
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