Greenberg was in the capital of New Zealand when the earthquake struck.
"I am in Wellington, which is at the bottom of the North Island, probably around 80 or 100 miles north of where the epicenter was. Just after midnight, about 23 hours ago there was a huge shake that lasted for about two minutes," he recalled. "It was certainly the worst quake I've ever felt in my 27 years in New Zealand. It caused some damage in Wellington, but as daylight came it became apparent that there was a lot of damage on the South Island."
Greenberg, who served as a crewman on the Wellington Westpac Rescue Helicopter from March 1991 to May 2016, said that the aftershocks could last for months.
"I spent 25 years on a rescue helicopter and I responded down to the Christchurch earthquakes in February 2011. Those aftershocks went on for months and months. We are still getting occasional ones from them. The rebuild effort is continuing, but it has not gotten very far down there," he said. "The prediction I heard on the news is that there is a high possibility of another 7.0 earthquake sometime in the next month following a sequence of earthquakes."
"I grew up in New York City. A quake of any magnitude there with the population density would be horrible. I guess one of the many good things about New Zealand is there is only 4.5 million people across the two islands. So in the area where the epicenter was, we are only talking in the thousands or tens of thousands of people, which is why I believe there were so few deaths," he said.
New Zealand sits on the Ring of Fire, an arc of seismic faults around the Pacific Ocean where earthquakes are common.
