One year since the ground started shaking in Canterbury

I can’t believe it has almost been half a year since I last wrote. More remarkably, it has been ONE year since Christchurch experienced the first earth quake. We just didn’t know what a roller coaster we were in for on the night of 4 September 2010. Now over 7,000 earthquakes/aftershocks afterwards, we are all exhausted.
Chch city center with its high rise buildings only shows as dark shadows at dusk

It has been very challenging to stay motivated. The Port Hills has been more or less closed for recreational use since February due to rock fall hazards. Sometimes we have had to ignore warnings since the risk of going mad is higher. Everything hasn’t been doom and gloom since I last wrote. We have taken every opportunity to leave Chch for the weekend.

It almost feels like we have lived in a bubble in a world centered on the workplace and the house. Until two days ago, I had not seen anything of the city center. A large part of the city has had extensive demolition works and now it is still the heart of the city is still cordoned off. By not visiting the city centre, you can almost pretend that the damage caused by the earth quakes almost never happened. I think, that is the reason why so many people still have not been visiting the center to witness the devastation.
Aerial photo of Chch city center with many buildings already demolished with plenty more to come down before we are allowed back into the center again.

Earthquakes are becoming such a normal part of our daily life. We have bets with friends and colleagues about which direction they came from, how deep and which magnitude.

At home, we are ready with head lights next to our bed, the garage full of water, sticky tape on all cupboards to limit the number of broken glasses, masking tape over all the cracks between GIB boards in the walls, etc. The cladding of the house has been removed to stop any more blocks from falling, but this has made the house even colder than before (never thought that was possible actually). The curtains are often moving in the wind despite having the windows shut. We had a low of 4 degrees Celsius in our bedroom one morning! We finally got the green light to use our own toilet in May. Until then we used the portoloo on the street for the No 2’s. I am very pleased we haven’t got kids…
We have to laugh about it or else we cry

At work there is endless talking about quakes, how little sleep we all have had, which buildings are coming down in demolitions, which houses have been red stickered (= not livable), pay outs from the Earth Quake Commission, EQC. The Government-owned Crown entity provides primary natural disaster insurance to the owners of residential properties in New Zealand. I think this is pretty unique in the world. For the 2010/11 Canterbury earthquakes, total EQC insurance and individual costs are expected to reach as high as NZ$7 billion.

The beautiful Council Chambers building is still in a mess, ready to be erased
Many people are frustrated about how the recovery and rebuild work is dealt with by the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA)

View north down Colombo Street where the pre-February retail central now has gaping open spaces left from the demolished buildings

Still lots of buildings in the CBD that has yet not had any attention
..or the ones that are just coming down. Note the All Blacks flags on the back, which is a common sight on all the trucks around the city. The rugby world cup spirit is strong. Go All Blacks!!

How have Cantabrians been coping to continue living normal lives? Well, earthquakes do often bring out the best in people at times. It has brought together strangers and neighbors and made us all feel more united than ever. Since many schools had to close, the lucky ones have had to share their facilities with other schools by splitting the schedule into a morning and an afternoon shift. It seems to have worked out really well and I hear some students even prefer it. It is also amazing to see the resilience in the commercial sector. Many companies have relocated several times since the quakes have hit them at different locations. Some of the ‘poorer’ suburbs have now flourished and are are thriving with lots of new businesses relocating to available space. Many of the city council staff have worked from a library or from the art gallery and many organisations have had half their workforce working from home. There are certainly many examples of how people are just getting on and making it work.

Through the Bridge of Remembrance, we can see a very tired city with many buildings on a slant. I hope this area will be thriving again soon.

Anna and I took 3-4 hours to bike around the cordoned area around the city center. It is not a large area, but there was so much to see or to be more correct, there was so much that was lost. I was stunned by the extent of the damage, but it still just felt like buildings to me and it didn't get to me. It all became more real when we came to the site where the CTV building had collapsed and killed 115 people. Flowers, posters, poems and other gifts were marking the memory of the dead. This is when the tears came.

' Kia kaha' has become the slogan for the rebuild of the city - It means 'Forever strong' in Maori!

The earthquake damage is not all bad. It is giving the region an amazing opportunity to create a new city, a modern and more sustainable city. The Draft City Plan was recently proposed by the council and it is describes a very positive vision for the city, which sometimes is full of naive enthusiasm (which is not a bad thing)! Now is the golden opportunity to develop a modern public transport system with trams/ light rail/ better bus connections, more cycle friendly areas, district heating solutions, less car parks, etc. I think the council has done a brilliant job in collating tens of thousands of ideas that the public has given them in May/June and developed this document within such a short time frame. It is a promising first step to rebuild the city. I think that taking the plan into action will be the hardest.