Christchurch: Shaking City

We were in Christchurch to visit with our friends Brian and Fran, but we couldn't help being interested in the current state of this beautiful city (pop. 350,000) with its elegant old buildings, gardens and parks.  When we arrived, it had been slightly over a year since the last big quake and the papers were still full of stories.

Brian and Fran were lucky.  Their wooden house had sustained only $150,000 damage in the two major quakes.  The chimney collapsed (along with brick chimneys all over the city), the floor had buckled and the house is no longer sitting level on its foundation, but it is livable.  They know that the land under their property did not turn to liquid during the quakes, so restoration will not be so problematic and will happen more quickly. Their private insurance will fund the job, with help from government earthquake insurance.

Brick walls crumble....news photo

o)

A retaining wall of containers.

Other families have not been so fortunate.  Whole neighbourhoods (up to 10,000 houses) have been abandoned because the homes are damaged and on land that will never provide a secure building foundation.

 On our way to a restaurant that is in its third location because two earlier sites were destroyed, we passed abandoned, darkened communities of expensive cliff-side homes.  These houses are shattered, empty, and most of them cannot be restored. The hillsides on which they stand are shored up with retaining walls built of shipping containers piled one on top of the other.

The full impact of the September 2010 and February 2011 quakes is most clearly seen in the downtown. The sky bristles with cranes which are part of a careful de-construction of buildings that have been identified as uninhabitable. One thousand buildings have been destroyed so far and another 800 are marked for demolition. (This number increases with every aftershock, as borderline buildings develop more severe problems and must be red-stickered.)

Dismantling a parking garage piece by piece

Cranes at work

A new building comes down.

The famous cathedral -- to be demolished.

Occasionally one sees scaffold around a building.  This is a good sign indicating that renovation is underway.

This church made the cut.