Saved from concrete tomb | Wairarapa News | Local News in Wairarapa

She could see blue sky, but was trapped in the tangled debris.

Mum-of-two Kendyll Mitchell regained consciousness 10 minutes after the collapse of the CTV building, and immediately groped for her children. She feared the worst why she couldn't hear them crying.

And her heart sank when she saw 3-year-old Jett still clinging on to her arm, covered in blood, and his 11-month-old baby sister Dita in her buggy, surrounded by rubble and a pane of glass astride her tiny chest.

But she soon realised it was her own blood and they had all just survived a terrifying five-floor plunge.

"It was a miracle," said Ms Mitchell, her voice quivering with emotion, speaking a year on this week.

Lying in the semi-light, entombed in broken steel and mortar, she was unaware of her own serious injuries - fractured pelvis, ugly leg gash, and concussion - and the danger was far from over.

She could see billowing smoke overhead, and knew she had to get her kids out of their 1m sq space.

"I thought the stairwell was going to fall and I could see smoke.

"I thought we had survived the collapse and now were going to be killed by smoke or fire.

"I tried to remove the rubble above our heads. My foot was pinned, and I managed to free that but the rest was too heavy.

"People were crying out for 'help', which seemed silly to me at the time, I don't know why.

"I heard someone walking above me and I yelled out.

"He told us we were okay, that he'd get us out.

"I held on to the kids and pretty quickly, a gap opened up above us. I just remember seeing this guy's face (Evan McLellan), and the rest was a bit of a blur."

Twelve months on, hairdresser Ms Mitchell still looks back on that fateful day with a mixture of wonderment, grief, and shock.

In an ironical twist, she had taken Jett to the fifth floor of the CTV building that day to undergo a counselling session at Relationship Services for anxiety brought on after the September earthquake, and the subsequent aftershocks.

"Aftershocks hit our house like a freight train," Ms Mitchell recalls. "Jett just couldn't cope. He wouldn't sleep in his room, clingy, and had severe anxiety. So we were going to our second earthquake counselling appointment that day."

They had arrived slightly early and were waiting to see the counsellor when disaster struck.

"The internal east wall started to disintegrate from the top and I thought it was a dream for a second, and then I knew it was real, and I thought we were all going to die. There was this massive sucking sensation - I felt we were being sucked down and the building staying in place. After reading eyewitness accounts, our floor pretty much stayed intact until it hit, and that makes a lot of sense."

While her kids were unscathed in the collapse, which killed 115 people, she suffered a triple fractured pelvis, a large leg gash, and a later diagnosed head injury. And while she is still undergoing rehabilitation, she doesn't complain.

"I'm just so glad it's me and not my kids," she says. "I'm slowly getting better but, emotionally, it's been a long recovery."

Ms Mitchell was discharged from hospital within hours on February 22, and her partner Hayden Lamont, 30, drove the whole family to Timaru, for sanctuary with family, and to recover.

They have stayed, for their own "sanity," Ms Mitchell says.