Thursday, September 26, 2013

Year 3 CERA. Behind the Wire: NW Suburban Repairs, Rebuilds. Copthorne Hotel Collapse

Behind The Wire: NW Suburbs, Copthorne Hotel Collapse focus. Fri 27.09.13. Ever since the 04.09.10 Darfield Quake, Cantabrians were behind the wire.
04.09.10 Darfield Quake: Steel mesh fence cordons had sprung up around quake damaged bldgs & dangerous bldgs. At that time, Council hadn't got its rapid assessments of bldgs organized properly, so many dangerous bldgs which should've been behind the wire weren't. I saw Council green and yellow stickers on the same bldg in St Asaph St. I saw several assessment sticker confusions like that.

26.12.10, Boxing Day Quake: More steel mesh fence cordons & Council rapid assessments & cockups for damaged, dangerous bldgs. I saw Cashel Mall steel mesh fence cordoned at The Crossing & The Press bldg in Cathedral Sq red stickered, yet in the 22.02.11 Killer Quake, workers were busy inside The Press bldg. One was killed, others injured.

22.02.11 Killer Quake. 185 dead, 6 600+ injured. Instead of red stickering, Council had twice green stickered shaky CTV post Sept 4 Darfield Quake & Boxing Day Quake. More steel mesh fence cordons around properties. The CBD was steel mesh fence cordoned & red zoned for 28 months by Civil Defence, then CERA, citizens banned. Only people allowed behind the wire were CERA approved contractors, CERA officials, cops, NZDF soldiers.

13.06.11 Quake & 23.12.11 Xmas Quake Swarm: More steel mesh fence cordons for damaged & dangerous bldgs. 

CERA red zoned 7 000+ residential properties along riversides & on the Port Hills. All ended up behind the wire after evacuations, CERA / NZ National govt takings & demolitions. While red zoners negotiated CERA offers, they were behind the wire, formed by NZ National govt / CERA red zoning.

Some people were still behind the wire, while NZ National govt / CERA dithered over red zoning reviews. CERA minister Brownlee often apologized for CERA delays & jabbered about getting things right, despite CERA delays. HA!

EQC & insurers followed Brownlee's delay tactics, putting property owners behind more wire.

Likewise 28 000 TC3 green zoners were behind the wire with expense of having to strengthen house foundations on quake damaged land.

While 1 000s of demolitions took place in the CBD & in residential red zones, all those properties were behind the wire. After CBD demolitions, there was rubble, dust, weeds & Wilson carparks in the CBD, behind the wire. In residential red zones, once CERA demolitions were completed, overgrown properties had shrubs & trees remaining. CERA then put residential red zone properties behind the wire again with CERA no access signs hung on wire fences.

Three years post 04.09.10 Darfield Quake, that wasn't the end of the wire. Now there were sporadic repairs & rebuilds in the suburbs, construction sites & demolition sites behind the wire.

SCIRT workers were behind the wire of their moveable steel mesh fence cordons & orange, plastic, road cones while they excavated & repaired roads.

Depending on our viewpoint, insider or outsider, we were all behind the wire in quaking Christchurch.

Friday 27.09.13. On her drives to London St work, Leah dropped me off by N Hagley Park, so I tekked back home to Burnside, 6km odd. I avoided noisy main roads, like Memorial Ave, Wairakei Rd & Papanui Rd by trekking back to Burnside via quiet roads in Fendalton, Merivale, Bryndwyr & Burnside. I crossed some busy roads like Holmwood Rd, Glandovey Rd, Idris Rd, but left them asap. 

For those with eyes & legs, NW suburbs, behind the wire were there for all to see. Some quake damages were invisible, as some posh houses hid behind high garden walls & wooden fences. But quake damages were there alright, evidenced by contractors' vehicles parked by fencing: concreters, asphalters, roofers & cladders, electricians, plumbers, plasterers, painters, tree trimmers, scaffolders, builders, landscape designers...

Contractors, architects, builders & cheeky insurers hung ad boards on the wire. Election boards hung on fences, grinning faces. Real estate boards praised quake damaged housing for sale: "TC2... Geotech & LIM reports available... As is where is basis... No insurance... Repair or Rebuild option... Auction..." God help Council when it calculated new rates for CERA's green zoning: TC1, TC2, TC3. What a mess. Town clerk Marryatt resigned in time for another CEO to take blame for new rates.

As so many posh suburb houses still needed repairs & rebuilds, it was an indictment of slow EQC & insurers. Complainers in other suburbs were justified in their complaints about EQC & insurers. (During & after 2016, thousands of shoddy EQC repairs, overseen by Fletcher, would need to be redone).

NW suburbs I trekked were a strange mix of mostly inhabited houses, some behind the wire, some ghosts, some demolition sites & construction sites, lots of repair sites & even more homes still without repairs, evidenced by boarded walls, chimney gaps & windows. Some house walls & garden walls were wood braced, grey weathering showing how long it took EQC to settle under cap $15 000 - $100 000 repairs & insurers to settle over cap $100 000 repairs.

For small repairs below $15 000, home owners were paid out cash by EQC. Our Heath St, 3 bedroom rental had low quake damages, minor cracks, garage doors no longer locking, but we still awaited repairs. Our slumlord pocketed EQC cash & left the house unfixed. We had lots of experience seeing slumlords doing few repairs, as pre & post quakes, 9 years so far, Jake had tenanted many rentals, incl a garage with chemical toilet for 6 months post 22.02.11 Killer Quake. During our 18 years' Christchurch residence, slumlords we knew did few repairs & less maintenance on their rentals. 

Home owners had the choice to take EQC / insurer money & run, or use it for repairs. Under cap repairs were overseen by Fletcher, CERA's stooge, or homeowners could opt out of Fletcher repairs & contract their own repairs, hence all the different contractors. Not a Fletcher board in sight, as Fletcher sub contracted shoddy repairs. Non repaired houses would cause anomalies in future Rates Valuations & hassles for future home buyers in quake repaired suburbs.

There was nothing stopping vendors pocketing EQC / insurance payouts, not fixing their housing & vending as is, where is. If buyers, real estate agents & conveyancing lawyers were asleep, regarding post quake house repairs, there would be hell to pay for future house buyers. In future, buying a pre quake house in Christchurch would be chancy. Despite post quakes, repairs / rebuilds hassles, there were several real estate boards touting houses or land for sale en route. 

My notes gave an idea of many contractors doing post quakes, residential repairs & constructions in NW suburbs. A ramping up, at last, of residential repairs & constructions 3 years post 04.09.10 Darfield Quake:


Helmores Ln off N Hagley Park: Helmores Ln Bridge, a wood span bridge over Avon River, behind a steel mesh fence cordon & white / orange, plastic bollards. Wood spans were OK, but spans were ripped away from concrete abutments sunk in Avon River mud. I saw that sort of abutment / span join damage all over Christchurch. Piers & spans withstood quakes OK, but abutments sank into mud or tilted at odd angles from spans, causing damage to spans. Some spans rotated horizontally in quakes, causing concrete spalling off abutments.







Helmores Ln Bridge: Repaired by SCIRT, 2016.

Helmores Ln: Demolition site. GREGG builder board on hedge. MEADOW landscape board, Architect board, Structural engineer board. Surveyor board on a steel mesh fence cordon by a  construction site. Parked CONCUT van.





Holmwood Rd: Broken brick wall behind a steel mesh fence. Boarded window on 2 storey house. HARCOURTS For Sale board on fence by a construction site. Yellow digger, SCIRT excavation behind a steel mesh fence cordon & detour by Holmwood Rd / Memorial Ave junction.






Garden Rd: Patched house wall. Wood braced, garden, brick wall, blue tarp on garage door. Boarded wall on brick house. Ghost house, overgrown garden.





Broken brick wall & locked gate by demolition site. Boarded window on a 2 storey house. DUNCAN TAYLOR builders board on fence, Duncan Taylor van & orange digger on demolition site behind a steel mesh fence cordon. STONEWOOD safety board on wooden fence. BUCHAN HOMES builder board on a garden, stone wall.







AVON DICKIE construction board on a garden, brick wall, white dump truck in driveway. Ghost house behind a locked picket gate.




Boarded windows & roof patch caused by broken chimney on a house, behind a wisteria festooned garden, wooden fence. NEW ZEALAND POST notice on a pavement letter box informed residents of closure of postal facilities, like road letter boxes. Sackings not mentioned.

NZ Post notice:

                 Please be aware this posting receptacle will be removed
                              between 7 October and 11 October 2013.

                    Mail will be cleared as usual until the box is removed.

                The nearest posting box is 60 Holmwood Road with a final
                                              posting time of 2 pm.

New Zealand Post is optimising the network of posting facilities to ensure a fair
balance between community needs, customer usage and servicing / security
                                                         costs...




Quake survivor wooden, road bridge over Wairarapa Stream, concrete abutments OK. Collapsed brick & tile house, Wairarapa Tce off Garden Rd. Three years of trekking post 04.09.10 Darfield Quake, I thought I'd seen it all, but was still spooked seeing collapsed housing for the first time. HARCOURTS Auction board for an uninsured, 2 storey, wooden house. Another 2 storey, wooden ghost, unrepaired top storey cnr.






IAG insurer board on a steel gate. Part demolished, 2 storey house by a construction site, behind a steel mesh fence cordon, concrete foundations laid, SUGRUE construction board on the cordon fence.
 







BAYLEYS Auction board, house SOLD.
   

Poynder Ave: BEHIND THE WIRE board behind a steel mesh fence cordon by a shipping container on a construction site. More boards on the cordon fence: Hazard board, VERO insurer, JOHN CREIGHTON builder.



LANDSCAPES design / construction board on a wooden fence by a scaffolded, 2 storey house. Big construction site with TAKAHE construction board on the fence. CSL shipping container parked on the road.
  



Wroxton Tce: Wood braced, garden, brick wall. Election poster on a wooden fence. Parked LASER PLUMBING van.







Black plastic covered bay window on a 2 storey house. Faded boards covered a fallen chimney hole on another 2 storey house. Like those houses & many others awaiting repairs, friends of Leah's still awaited EQC's & insurer's decisions whether their house near Wroxton Tce would be repaired or demolished for a rebuild. Three years post 04.09.10 Darfield Quake, that was huge stress caused by slow insurers.



Parked A TEAM plasterers van: The friendly plasterer gave me a thumbs up when I took a pic. He made big bucks from quake repairs. A garden wall was demolished behind a steel & orange, plastic, wire fence cordon.



Wroxton Tce / Idris Rd junction: Election posters on a boarded fence. Election poster on a wooden fence, Wroxton Tce cnr.

 

Idris Rd: A yellow digger made a heap of roof metal for salvage on a house demolition site. A red salvage truck reversing into the driveway caused a traffic jam. Road users were familiar with trucks causing traffic jams all over Christchurch. Wood braced electrical substation.











Glandovey Rd: Scaffolded garage. Election poster on a wooden fence. WARNER fences van reversed into a driveway. Painter's van parked in another driveway.






Boarded windows on a 2 storey house. Brick gate post was strapped to a wooden fence to stop collapse. Since the quakes, nylon straps were used to secure loose bits of buildings all over town. EQC, Fletcher & insurers took too long to sort out simple repairs like a dangerous gate post on a busy roadside.

 


An orange, plastic, road cone cordon surrounded a yellow sewage pump, obstructing traffic in the middle of the road. Traffic would be obstructed by road works for years to come. SCIRT was only now ramping up road works in the CBD.


Glandovey Rd / Garreg Rd: Town house construction behind a steel mesh cordon. Several boards on the wire: INTEGRA masonry board, Hazard boards, DULUX paint board, LIGHTING PLUS board.







Garreg Rd: HARCOURTS Sold board behind a steel mesh fence cordon on a demolition site. MILES construction board on the wire. CBEER construction board & hazard board on a wooden fence. CARTERS builder DANGER board on another wooden fence. TREEWORKS truck was parked on a driveway by flowering cherry blossoms. Wood braced, end wall of a brick house. Another house, wood boarded in front.









Ashby Pl: Two large, 2 storey, concrete & brick ghosts behind a steel mesh fence cordon. Many quake cracks on the brickwork, bricks fallen in places. Some windows & walls boarded.
















Bryndwyr Rd / Newell Ave: A painter van was parked in a driveway, the painter packing up... Got it?



*Trekked Helmores Ln, Holmwood Rd, Garden Rd, Poynder Ave, Wroxton Tce, Idris Rd, Glandovey Rd, Garreg Rd, Ashby Pl, Newell Ave, Victoria Sq, Manchester St, Cambridge Tce. 165 images.

Victoria Sq: Sat 28.09.13. OneNews reported that 10 storey Copthorne Hotel collapsed during demolition. No one was injured while a Southern Demolition digger chomped. An unsafe demolition: 2 wobbly N & S shear walls & disconnected concrete floors collapsing in between, a house of cards. Why had it taken so long to demolish the bldg? Nearby, Town Hall ghost up Colombo St got a helluva shaking.

Behind a steel mesh fence cordon, Victoria Sq, Queen Victoria statue was amused. Capt James Cook statue stared. He'd seen it all before.


29.09.13. Victoria Sq view, demolition collapsed Copthorne Hotel. Capt James Cook statue foreground left






Like Town Hall ghost, Forsyth Barr / Crowne Plaza Hotel ghost other ghosts & demolished bldgs in the vicinity, Copthorne Hotel ghost was built on swampland near Avon River. Copthorne Hotel was abandoned for over 2 years while ghosts behind it were demolished, including PWC high rise, so Copthorne Hotel hadn't only endured 13 000 quakes, but endured 1 000s of digger thumpings during nearby demolitions. Steel rebars would've been shaken & shocked by quakes & demolitions. Steel mesh fence cordon, threat signs:

DANGER
KEEP OUT

EXTREME DANGER
KEEP OUT

AUTHORISED
PERSONNEL ONLY


29.09.13. Victoria Sq view, demolition collapsed Copthorne Hotel. Abandoned Ernst & Young left awaited demolition















Sun 29.09.13. From behind the steel mesh fence cordon on Cambridge Tce, Manchester St Bridge, Armagh St & Victoria Sq, I had a good look at demolition collapsed Copthorne Hotel: The NW shear wall had failed & sunk about a foot into the ground.


29.09.13. Cambridge Tce view, Oxford Tce & demolition collapsed Copthorne Hotel. Abandoned Forsyth Barr / Crowne Plaza Hotel left awaited repairs. Abandoned Victoria Square apartments behind awaited demolition for CERA's Blueprint Convention Centre / Te Pae. Abandoned Town Hall right awaited repairs

















The NW shear wall on the outside was divided longitudinally by a stairwell in the middle. Easily seen from Cambridge Tce, a huge concrete crack was on the NW shear wall base, exposing failed rebars, with tons of shear wall concrete sunk into the ground, the shear wall base bulging N. About half way up the NW shear wall was a horizontal shadow line of a demolished neighbouring roof. The shadow line was about a foot below the horizontal shadow roof line of the adjoining NE shear wall.

After a thump from a Southern Demolition digger, the NW shear wall failed & sheared into the ground, putting huge strain on rebars in shear walls & rebars in concrete floors connected to shear walls. The weak rebar connections snapped & thin concrete columns supporting the floors snapped. Collapse! N & S shear walls were left standing, with pancaked, collapsed floors horizontal in between. Anything living between those concrete floors before collapse would've been pulverized: DNA in a dust cloud.

At inner cnrs of the N & S shear walls, all floors had rebars hanging, where concrete floors had snapped off & collapsed. Two thin, concrete columns still stood in the middle of the mess between the shear walls, sparse rebars hanging.


29.09.13. Manchester St Bridge view, Oxford Tce, demolition collapsed Copthorne Hotel right. Abandoned Forsyth Barr / Crowne Plaza Hotel left awaited repairs. Abandoned Victoria Square apartments middle left awaited demolition for CERA's Blueprint Convention Centre / Te Pae









29.09.13. Cambridge Tce view, Oxford Tce, collapsed Copthorne Hotel. Abandoned Forsyth Barr / Crowne Plaza Hotel left awaited repairs. Victoria Square apartments right awaited demolition for CERA's Blueprint Convention Centre / Te Pae








As Christchurch red zone CBD was behind the wire for 28 months, guarded by cop & NZDF checkpoints, there was no public scrutiny in the forbidden CBD. There would be a delay while bureaucrats found out why Copthorne Hotel collapsed during demolition. A waste of time & money.

That demolition fiasco confirmed why I'd never enter any high rise in Christchurch CBD again, no matter how "safe." So far, after 13 000 quakes & many demolition thumpings in the CBD, how many shear walls & other walls had repeatedly bounced, weakening bldgs? Quakes & demolitions weakened rebars. And Council wanted to reintroduce trams into the CBD, further weakening bldgs with their rumblings.

Those who'd worked behind the wire all those months had a sledge-hammer mentality, which hadn't gone now that public could see what went on. That came from CERA minister Brownlee's red zonings & CBD Blueprint to bash red zone bldgs to bits, bash residential red zoners into submission, bash TC3 green zoners into submission, bash CBD property owners in CERA's Blueprint Frame into submission. But praise EQC & insurers to the skies. Hallelujah!

London St: Behind the wire, Leah had endured months of seismic demolition thumpings at her school, due to intermittent SCIRT excavations & part demolitions of nearby Richmond Working Mens Club. She'd had enough & wanted to leave the school, after working there full-time for 9 years. (The school would only be repaired in 2015, two years after she'd left).

Papanui Rd: Behind the wire, Jake had endured seismic thumpings when the Chinese Methodist Church was demolished next door to his Brewers Arms workplace. When I told him about Copthorne Hotel collapse, he laughed. Deja vu, as Under The Red Verandah restaurant bldg had collapsed beside him in the 22.02.11 Killer Quake, Worcester St / Tancred St

Horatio St: Behind the wire at Douglas Furnishers, Luke had endured seismic thumpings while CERES demolition diggers demolished DB Brewery across the road, then crushed salvage concrete on site. Whenever I picked up Luke at work, I experienced seismic thumpings, causing my parked car to bounce, while CERES diggers crushed concrete. When I mentioned demolition thumpings, Luke stared like I was mad. He'd habituated to the thumpings, although his workplace shook several times daily when a CERES digger thumped.

Like Douglas Furnishers, many weak bldgs along Antigua St, Horatio St & Balfour Tce were slated for CCDU's Blueprint Metro Sports Facility. So far, like Copthorne Hotel, they were weakened by 13 000 quakes & 1 000s of digger thumpings. Bugger worker safety, business as usual. 

Meanwhile, CERA appealed a court case which had ruled red zoning illegal. Unless NZ National govt gazetted Avon River red zone as parkland, controlled by Council or DOC, future NZ govts would feed at the Avon River trough, processing red zone land for developers, ignoring the fact that red zones had been "destroyed" by quakes & NZ National govt edict.

Coda:

Dec 2019. New RC bishop Martin would announce that a new RC Cathedral, school & carpark would be built in the vicinity of the collapsed / demolished Copthorne Hotel & demolished PWC bldg. The PWC flooded, concrete basement & stunted concrete columns would become a nesting place for rare black billed gulls, until demolition of the flooded basement in 2021. Bishop Martin hadn't experienced Christchurch quakes, nor experienced CERA's military regime behind the wire, but bishop Martin wanted to build the new RC Cathedral on Avon River bank swampland, bordered by Victoria Sq, Colombo St, Oxford Tce, Armagh St.

Content & pics Copyright Mark JS Esslemont.

See Rates hike to hit homes (The Press / Stuff Co). 

See Work halted after Copthorne collapse (The Press / Stuff Co). 

See $15m to connect Avon River to sea (The Press / Stuff Co).

See Tremors exposed Earthquake Commission (The Press / Stuff Co).