1. Pages Rd through Bexley, past ruined red-zone streets Waitaki St & Bexley Rd...
2. New Brighton Rd, ragged red-zone, past Burwood to The Palms...
3. New Brighton Rd, cross Avondale Rd Bridge, then ragged red-zone Avonside Dr...
4. Ragged red-zone, New Brighton Rd, Locksley Ave, Dallington Tce, River Rd, Swanns Rd, Stanmore Rd...
Since the quakes, after people evacuated & CERA red-zoned 1 000s of riverside properties, ruined-houses were tagged & had broken, vandalized windows & overgrown gardens. Whenever I drove the ragged edge of the residential red-zone, it was more desolate with more CERA demolitions & weedy gaps between ruins after evacuees took the CERA / Crown offer & / or dealt with insurers for rebuild payouts.
CERA's latest "Red Zone Statistics
Total number of red zoned properties in greater Christchurch: 7 860.
Red zoned property owners who've returned a sale & purchase agreement: 6 315.
Number who've settled with the Crown: 5 064.
(Of those, 1 286 selected option 1 where the Crown buys the land & improvements. 3 778 selected option 2 where the Crown purchases the land only)." Greater Christchurch Recovery Update, Issue 16, December 2012.
The above statistics confirmed CERA's red-zone residential take, mostly riverside properties & some Port Hills properties. It added to CERA's take of scores of CBD red-zoned properties for its CBD Blueprint precincts & CBD Frame land. CERA's take of Christchurch CBD was touted by CERA / CCDU as "Land Acquisition."
What CERA didn't report was that the Crown would compensate only "half the most recent Rateable Value" for red-zone vacant land, which was uninsurable. (CERA press release 13 September 2012). A CERA rip off! That also applied to CBD Frame land confiscations for landowners refusing to sell their CBD land to CERA / CCDU.
CERA's CCDU Blueprint wanted to rebuild Christchurch CBD on swampland above Christchurch Fault. And use taxpayers' money for the CBD Frame take & burden ratepayers for decades with an expensive 35 000 seater, roofed Stadium & expensive Convention Centre / Te Pae built on swampland above the Christchurch Fault.
The Press 15.12.12 quoted costs of the Stadium & Convention Centre / Te Pae as $400m & $300m respectively. What for? Hotels & school halls or varsity or polytech or training college lecture theatres or halls could easiy be used as Convention Centres & Christchurch already had enough stadiums. CERA / CCDU was bonkers wanting to foist those expenses on ratepayers, when many people existed in ruins & drove on ruined-roads.
The iniquity of CERA's CBD take was that CERA would used taxpayers' money to boot CBD landowners off their CBD land & replace their properties with "anchor projects," like a Convention Centre / Te Pae & a Stadium & Frame parks. (In future "CCDU FAQ - Land Acquisition" would disappear from the internet when CERA disbanded).
12.12.12. Quake survivor, Baker St house
Via option 4 above, I drove the ragged edge of the residential red-zone to Stanmore Rd near where Leah worked. All red-zone roads were ruined: potholed & shingled, lumpy & bumpy. I saw more ruined-houses & more demolition-sites than when I'd last driven that way, several ruined-houses steel-mesh-fence-cordoned with demolition-notices on fencing. Some joggers & drivers bumped along, but 100s of overgrown houses were lifeless by Avon River.
London St: Leah's Jean Seabrook Memorial School, Seabrook McKenzie Centre was twice liquefactioned in the 22 February 2011 Quake & the 13 June 2011 Quake. Staff & parents twice dug their school out of quakemire. The school was close to Avon River's ragged edge of the residential red-zone which fringed the CBD's red-zone.
12.12.12. Quake survivor, Seabrook McKenzie Centre, London St
12.12.12. Teacher, Jean Seabrook Memorial School, London St
London St / Pavitt St: Since the 22 February 2011 Quake, a green-plastic-sewage-tank stood on the footpath by the school on Pavitt St corner. Recently SCIRT spent weeks repairing sewage-pipes in London St causing school staff & nearby house / flat residents to detour to their homes & work. Nearly two years post 22 February 2011 Quake, London St was still poorly repaired.
12.12.12. London St / Pavitt St view, Richmond Working Mens Club. The Club would be demolished, then rebuilt 2020, named Richmond Club
London St: About 50 paces from Leah's school, I looked at Richmond Working Mens Club, ruined in the 22 February 2011 Quake & the 13 June 2011 Quake. Months later the club was part-demolished. Over the last week I saw more demolition. A steel-mesh-fence-cordon threat-sign:
DANGER
ASBESTOS
HAZARD
Never mind Leah's school playground was less than 50m from the club demolition-site. Demolishers put school kids' & staffs' & residents' lives at risk. They could've waited a few weeks to do their dirty work during school holidays!
12.12.12. Steel mesh fence cordon. Richmond Working Mens Club demolition, London St / Stanmore Rd. The club would be rebuilt 2020, named Richmond Club
Over the last year, Leah complained that whenever a heavy vehicle rumbled past her school, the school shook. That was over & above 1 000s of aftershocks. She'd had a guts-full!
12.12.12. Richmond Working Mens Club demolition, London St / Stanmore Rd. The club would be rebuilt 2020, named Richmond Club
Later Richmond Working Mens Club, est 1888, would be completely demolished. The club would be rebuilt in 2020, named Richmond Club. Jake would chef there until he left for Australia in November 2024.
Stanmore Rd: Next to Richmond Working Mens Club ruin I saw what was left of Richmond Methodist Church. The hall was gone, demolished. Busy Stanmore Rd near the ragged edge of the residential red-zone was a messy mix of survivor buildings & demolition-sites & tagging. An idiot had spray-painted "duck" all over the show. Pre-quakes, Leah & school kids had regularly used the church hall for school activities.
On the wooden church-door, a threat-sign:
DANGER
CONSTRUCTION SITE
Keep out!
12.12.12. Steel mesh fence cordon. Quake survivor, Richmond Methodist Church, Stanmore Rd. Richmond Methodist Church would be relocated by truck to Marshlands Rd, 30.03.16
On Richmond Methodist Church's steel-mesh-fence-cordon, a banner:
STAND UP FOR OUR KIDS
SAVE OUR LOCAL SCHOOL
RICHMOND SCHOOL
Protest was in vain as MoE soon closed Richmond School together with several other Christchurch schools, like Phillipstown School. MoE used quakes as Shock Doctrine to vandalize Christchurch education. Quakes enabled Disaster Capitalism for NZ National government to disrupt traumatized communities & asset-sale schools on valuable land. (Example: 2022. Townhouses would be built on demolished New Brighton School land).
12.12.12. Richmond School, Rubble Renewal Project, Richmond Methodist Hall, demolition site, Stanmore Rd
Post-quakes, school kids from nearby Richmond School, Pavitt St, made a community garden on the church's demolition-site, a Gap Filler initiative. By the community garden, a mural was on the concrete wall of Richmond Working Mens Club.
A sign in the garden:
"This year children of Richmond School have been learning about 'L.I.F.E.' How our Life Impacts the Future of our Earth...
Our senior class took the opportunity to plan, design and create a Rubble Renewal project on this Methodist Church site. What you see here is a combination of many weeks of work and the generosity of our supporters' time, hard work and resources...
We know that this will be a space that will be enjoyed and cared for by our community."
Post-quakes, Richmond Methodist Church & Hall site would become part of Richmond Club rebuild.
12.12.12. Richmond School, Rubble Renewal Project, Richmond Methodist Hall demolition site, Stanmore Rd
Richmond School was slated for closure by NZ National government. MoE minister Parata destroyed survivor communities by closures & mergers of schools all over Christchurch. Parata was a list MP (no electorate mandate) who did NZ National government's dirty work!br />
*Trekked Baker St, London St, Stanmore Rd. 53 images.
Saturday 15.12.12. 6.03pm, M3.5 quake, 9km depth, 10km southeast of Christchurch (GeoNet). Shook our lounge sofa while I watched TV news. Leah didn't feel it as she was walking around.
Friday 21.12.12. MoE was in such disarray that Education Secretary, Lesley Longstone, a Pom, was sacked after serving only a year of her five year contract. Parata, PM Key's puppet, caused more strife in Christchurch schools, like wanting to increase class sizes & botching teacher payrolls for months.
We heard a chorus of expedient apologies by various managers after being named & shamed by the Royal Commission of Inquiry & Coroner's Inquest into 115 deaths at multi-storey CTV's collapse in the 22 February 2011 Quake: Reay, 1986 engineering design boss of CTV, apologised belatedly to the Royal Commission. McGill fire service boss apologised for slack management of fire & USAR / TF on the 22 February 2011 Quake day. Mayor Parker apologised for Council's incompetent green-stickering of CTV post 4 September 2010 Quake & 26 December 2010 Boxing Day Quake. Parker also apologised for Council's consenting design & construction of CTV in 1986, despite design not being up to code. (The Star 12.12.12).
Those "apologies" only came months after intense legal & public scrutiny of their organizations!
Wednesday 26.12.12. A Boxing Day lunch at Luke's girlfriend's home in South New Brighton. A late afternoon quake shook the house & rattled windows. On Christmas Day at breakfast time, a M3.5 quake had passed Burnside without us feeling it.
The South New Brighton house had a sewage pump-house in the garden. During the 22 February 2011 Quake the concrete manhole lifted one metre above the soil. Sewage-pipes were fixed, but the land subsided, causing a room to pull away from the house. (March 2016, Luke's ex girlfriend would suffer PTSD, her nerves shot, having endured the ragged edge of Pegasus Bay Faults & the Port Hills Fault).
Subsidence happened all over town after SCIRT dug up roads to replace or repair pipes. After SCIRT excavations & SCIRT re-laid patchy asphalt, roads were often worse than before due to subsidence & ground movements during aftershocks & new potholes or bumps forming.
After more than two years of thousands of quakes we were left with quake-anxiety & wondering when the next big quake would strike! Our highrise-phobia caused us to avoid ruined highrises & abandoned or cordoned high-rises. Forsyth Barr in the CBD would survive quakes, despite its stairs failing & people being lowered from windows during the 22 February 2011 Quake. You'd never catch me entering highrise Forsyth Barr / Crowne Plaza Hotel, nor highrise Pacific Tower / Rendezvous Hotel, nor other Christchurch highrises again. Stairs gone in Forsyth Barr & wall surface cracks in Pacific Tower would allow oxidation of reinforcement steel! I doubted epoxy-gluing wall-cracks in Pacific Tower would strengthen that highrise!
We were left with quake-anniversaries, where we were & what we did when the five big quakes struck: 4 September 2010 Quake; 26 December 2010 Boxing Day Quake; 22 February 2011 Quake; 13 June 2011 Quake; 23 December 2011 Xmas Quake Swarm.
While rumblings continued, we wondered when & where the next big quake would hit? Seismologists were strangely quiet.
Coda:
30.03.16. The Press reported that Richmond Methodist Church would be truck-relocated to Marshlands Rd. It wasn't the first nor last wooden-building to be truck-relocated.
Richmond School, Pavitt St, would stop funtioning as a school, but would remain an Education Hub used by teachers. 2021. Leah would give a Resource Teacher Literacy seminar to teachers there, organized by nearby Seabrook McKenzie Centre, London St. 2023.As we were living in South Canterbury, after resigning from part-time teacher-training at the Centre, Leah would be farewelled at the Education Hub. She'd taught at Seabrook Mckenzie Centre for two decades.
Content & pics Copyright Mark JS Esslemont.
See Education secretary quits job (The Press / Stuff Co).
See Further red zone properties addressed 13 September 2012 (CERA press release).
See Forsyth Barr building may be repaired (The Press / Stuff Co).
See Pegasus Bay Faults (NIWA).
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