After Christchurch's 4 September 2010 Darfield Quake, M7.1 & State-of-Emergency, ending on 15 September, although I'd stopped snapping damages for a while, aftershocks continued, so I posted Facebook comments:
On 4 September 2010 shortly after 4.35am, the quake stopped the clock on the old station clock-tower, Moorhouse Ave. Stopped the clock on the Jubilee clock tower, Victoria St 200. 19 September 8.31am.
A Building Recovery Office was organized on the Ground Floor of the new Christchurch City Council building, 53 Hereford St: The purpose is to provide advice and streamlined consents approvals for buildings damaged in the earthquake. There will be a range of building and planning specialists available at the office. (Buck councillor flyer). 19 September 11.50am.
@Sheila. Damages can be claimed from the Earthquake Commission (EQC) a NZ govt agency. One also claims from one's own insurance company for damages not covered by the EQC. Council consenting approval & building plans usually take months, but the new office should cut through red-tape, speeding-up things, so people can repair / rebuild asap. Government pushed through new laws post-quake to cut through red-tape, as thousands of houses / businesses need rebuilding or repairs.
[Wishful thinking, as two years post 22 February 2011 quake, Council was still slow in processing new building consents.
This EQC prediction proved false: "The target is to have settled all claims under $10 000 by Christmas and to have inspected all properties with likely claims over $10 000 by March next year. EQC is settling its part of claims over $100 000 as they are identified. The repair work for all claims between $10 000 and $100 000, the ones to be managed by our Project Management Office, may take up to two years. We expect reinstating damaged land to take up to 18 months." EQC advert The Star, 5 November 2010, two months post 4 September quake.
"Reinstating damaged land" consisted of mechanically bashing land to shrink pore space between soil particles, then infilling the hole. There was no guarantee that soil bashing would stop future liquefaction damage, just the fact that before the quake, land was bashed at Pegasus town development, north of Christchurch & was unaffected by liquefaction.
December 2023. The Press would report a class-action by landowners who were short-changed by EQC, which had only paid out land-owners for the value of their liquefactioned-land, not for repairing their liquefactioned-land!]
rist
Besides spring-flowers blooming, Christchurch has become colourful since the quake: damaged-buildings adorned in green, blue, red, orange, yellow, black, grey plastic-tarps covering roofs or bandaging chimneys. Wobbly-gables are wood-braced, wobbly-walls & footpath-awnings are firmed with wood-bracing or steel-bracing until proper repairs can be done. CBD is full of steel-mesh-fencing, scaffolding around buildings while workmen do repairs.
New laws were quickly passed to increase reinforcement of Heritage-buildings, as Christchurch has many Victorian, greystone-basalt buildings, so some Heritage-building owners / mortgagees are whining that it's cheaper to demolish their Heritage-buildings than to pay for extra quake- reinforcements. Heritage-buildings are full of quake-cracks. 19 September 7.42pm.
-Christchurch's damaged-warehouses & Kaikoura's landslide over road-rail-links caused unusual brand-names & stock-shortages on supermarket shelves: bread, rice, flour, toilet-paper, paper-towels, sultanas, raisins, Coca Cola, bananas. Some dearest or cheapest stocks only available. Quake-damage-specials on goods liked tinned Watties baked-beans. Bought a 10kg bag of Invercargill Nadine spuds, $3 cheaper. 21 Sept 9.48am.
Leah's colleague lost her Burwood home in the M7.1 Darfield Quake. Doors silted closed by liquefaction stopped her family fleeing in the night. Trapped in the quaking house, the family cowered by a wall in the dark thinking the world was ending; while a void opened in the middle of their house. Two weeks later in daylight they still can't see the bottom. 21 September 7.02pm.
@Cherryn Paige, Cassidy. After most things stopped in the week or so post-quake, during the State-of-Emergency, now that people are back at work, their lives are changed forever, the stories... 21 September 7.15pm.
@Sheila. Everything has changed. Christchurch, structurally scarred. People have quake-fever. Leah's workmates can't concentrate, out of sorts. Luke's workmate from Chile was sacked for continually arguing with the builder's apprentice.
Leah is the only stable person part-time teaching a girl whose Kaiapoi family lost their home, which sunk over 20cm into quakemire. The girl's St Paul's School, Dallington, must be rebuilt, so the girl must move to a temporary school, Cathedral College. Must re-school again next year.
A SA Dallington family we know had no sewage nor water connections for five days post-quake, due to liquefaction damage. Another Burwood family Leah knows also lost their home due to liquefaction: used buckets as toilets for days before Civil Defence provided portaloos [only after that mess was shown on national TV]. 22 September 8.30am.
@Sheila, Janet. I see many "Business Relocated" hand-written signs on damaged premises. Newspaper notices too. eg:
"Due to the earthquake all Mastertrade staff have relocated to Mico Bathrooms in Antigua Street, just round the corner.
Our staff are fully up and running and keen to help out anyone with plumbing or bathroom enquiries." (The Press). 22 September 8.46am.
PM Key: "We are negotiating with insurers, with the EQC to make sure we can put together a package that allows them [claimants] to have their assets preserved, restored and the least financial impact on those residents." The Press. 22 September 8.55am.
[Did PM Key know about previous National & Labour govts dipping into EQC funds? After the quake, Christchurch housing market slowed, almost halting. Our Indian neighbours from Delhi couldn't sell their house, (for sale pre-quake) so took it off the market. Who wanted to buy a house when aftershocks could cause damage?]
Three Boys Brewery, Woolston, named two unique beers, M7.1 & Aftershock, after the M7.1 quake shook a brewing beer & a M5.1 aftershock caused a power-cut to another brewing beer. Will be sold at bars like The Twisted Hop, Poplar St (The Press). 23 September 9.41am.
Day 19: We were shaken awake by a M4.5 aftershock, epicentre 10km west of Christchurch. Spooked cat jumped off our bed. GeoNet gives quake-information: daily NZ seismic-activity. Many rural-quakes on North Island. 23 Sept 9.53am.
@Pippa. Hardly notice aftershocks anymore, pause then carry on. Big aftershocks are still unnerving, especially ones that wake us up, like last night's M4.5 at 3.40am, epicentre 20km west of Christchurch. GeoNet records daily quakes around us: Darfield, Springfield, Lyttelton, towns near Christchurch. Know a kid who can't sleep at night, fears she's going to die in a quake. 24 September 10.04am.
@Pippa. Christchurch City Council & Canterbury Health Board elections continue. Some promises by candidates in their pre-quake blurbs are funny: "Safety of Christchurch streets. We are now officially NZ's safest metropolitan centre." (mayor Parker). "I will work to keep our water fresh, clean & available to all." (Anderton). "Will promote an untouched clean water supply." (Hawarden). 24 September 11.24am.
Damages: "Damage totalling $4 billion including $2 billion to residential property, $1 billion for commercial and industrial property, $1 billion for council and government infrastructure... Over 2 600 homes have been reported as uninhabitable and a further 2 900 as not weatherproof." (The Star). 25 September 9.36am.
@Sean. Many people affected, much damage. Three weeks post-quake, many clean-ups & repairs going on. Christchurch has empty sites where once old buildings stood. CBD looks different already. Will be interesting to see what councillors, planners, architects, tradesmen do to improve Christchurch.
Some repairs briefly look worse than quake-damage e.g. scaffolding, cranes, building-inspectors everywhere. New bare wooden-supports below wonky footpath-awnings, awaiting restoration. Steeple-roof taken off Chinese Methodist Church, Papanui Rd. Bright new corrugated-iron patches on roofs where chimneys once stood. Victoria St / Bealey Ave Saggio di vino restaurant, roof-damaged, outer brick-wall stripped off during rebuilding. Ferry Rd. Another building, roof-damaged, slowly being hand-demolished. [Demolition speeded up the next week]. Great rubble-mounds fenced off, twisted-metal on demolition-sites, awaiting haulage.
Another aftershock, guesstimate M4, while on Facebook. Shook my seat! 25 September 10.26am
Daily traffic-jams in the CBD, due to fencing & plastic-tapes across repair areas, changes daily. 25 September 11.18am.
@Sean, George. Complaints from damaged-areas that bus-tours were going past damaged-houses. Several big aftershocks today, Sat / early Sun morn, last one minutes ago after 2am, big, rumbly, grumbly, made my spine judder in my seat. 26 September 3.04pm.
@Sean. Hopefully local leaders will get it right. Victorians got it wrong, bricks, masonry in a quake-zone. Hailers are now calling masonry- buildings "Heritage buildings" worthy of preserving. Till someone gets killed! 26 September 3.33pm.
129 new snaps. Darfield Earthquake, M7.1, 04.09.2010. 26 September 3.53pm.
@Janet. I went out daily for 13 days documenting changes. In reality, you wont see what's in the snaps again, as clean-ups & demolitions happened fast. Some snaps already show clean-ups, but some junk was left. 26 September 5.56pm.
@Anton, David. Already snapped some then-&-now images as some demolitions happened fast. As I took many angle-shots, I'll put more pics on my Woza Wanderer blog when I can, as Blogger is as slow as Facebook, max five snaps a time, will take a while. 27 September 8.29am.
@Lynelle. Working on blogging snaps, unfinished. Aftershocks haven't stopped for three weeks now.
Luke broke his collarbone skateboarding over a footpath hole in the dark. Celebrity with his mates. 27 September 3.36pm.
@Diane, Jenny. Luke on pain-killers. Fall happened at night, Luke often skates home at night. He "slept" overnight at home, we weren't sure it was a break. Only took him to a doctor next day (Saturday). Clean-break, no protruding bone. Treatment: leave it to regrow, as it's too close to veins. Will see doctor again in two weeks. Fortunately Luke has finished his 200 hour practical for his builder-course, as he's off building-site work for a while. 27 September 11.17pm.
More Snaps: Darfield Earthquake, M7.1, 04.09.2010. 27 Sept 11.51pm.
@Sheila, John. Over 13 days I only snapped small areas in suburbs & CBD, then stopped, exhausted. Also demolishers, repairmen, some suspicious, unfriendly cops & troops hovered, discouraging rubberneckers, all branded potential "looters" during the State-of-Emergency. I didn't always catch the immediate aftermath of the quake, impossible as only professional photographers were allowed in State-of-Emergency-cordons manned by cops & soldiers for 10 days post-quake. The rest of us could've been arrested for curfew-breaking, being within cordons illegally. Several court-cases already punish looters / burglars / thieves / drunks in "wrong" places.
I documented places I've known over the last 15 years. Haven't seen several Christchurch suburbs, but see more damage daily, as well as rapid repairs, demolitions. Nearby towns like Brooklands, Spencerville, Kaiapoi, Lyttelton, Rolleston, Prebbleton, Kirwee, Darfield, Coalgate, Springfield, Rangiora, Oxford all have their quake-stories. 28 September 09.00am.
Heath St: Ornamental apple-blossoms line our street. Scent will always remind me of quakes. 28 September 10.42am.
Ex councillor: "Now after the quake... the Council has the power to stop demolition & urges the fast tracking of Heritage reviews as well as the implementation of other measures." (Nor'west news). The councillor should buy those Heritage-buildings & use them personally, not expect ratepayers to buy junk. 29 September 3.14pm.
@Val from Leah. Aftershocks continue to do damage. We are aware of minor surface cracks in our house that weren't there initially. I'm glad to be in a wooden house.
Despite all the serious damage around us, we were lucky. Some people without homes must rebuild their lives. Amazing seeing rubble-piles where unsafe buildings were demolished.
Aftershock right now! Watching a pen on our desk roll from side to side. My pot-plant leaves move like a wind is in the room. The chair I'm sitting on shudders beneath me. Used to adjusting to quakes, they generally don't last long!
In our area [Burnside] we have water which no longer needs boiling, sewage OK, power back to normal. Some people took longer to get theirs' back to normal, relying on portaloos & help from others. Two of my friends lost their homes.
Pressure on roads: more cars must go on available roads, not all are safe, some are closed or have sections closed. Took me more than double my usual time to return from work the day schools reopened. (Schools, many businesses closed for a week, while safety-checks & damage-assessments were done). I've become creative in using side-roads, avoiding many roads. Repairs are already underway or completed. Creepy driving over roads cracked like torn paper.
Buildings already demolished, others braced with wood or steel as temporary-repairs for safety. Many churches built from stone or brick are damaged, sad to see. Chinese Methodist Church near our home: damaged, unsafe steeple-roof was lifted by crane & set onto the ground beside the church, till the danger is over & it can be safely repaired.
Will take a long time till our limping, scarred city mends. 30 September 3.04pm.
@Val from Leah. Aftershocks STILL around. Not as frequent, but still giving us some whoppers! Last weekend we had a M4.5 & a M4.9! It's weird watching things like pens roll from side to side, or water in a jug do a swaying dance. The whole house rocks, windows rattle, we feel vibrations of shock-waves through our bodies. Luckily our house is in an area relatively unaffected so it's less stressful. For those whose houses are already damaged, each aftershock brings fresh worries.
Incredible damage we've seen: buildings moved or tilted, or structures either sunk or risen.
Driving around the city will continue to give hassles for some time, damaged roads & buildings cause traffic problems. 30 September 6.11pm.
Copyright Mark JS Esslemont.
No comments:
Post a Comment