Christchurch: Two Years On

It's now been two years since the devastating February 22nd earthquake which hit Christchurch, destroying many homes and businesses, and taking the lives of 185 people. Thankfully the magnitude and frequency of aftershocks are both decreasing (see the Canterbury Quake Live site), along with the chance of there being any more major aftershocks. Some parts of the city have been fixed, but others are still in disarray. On my visit back home over Christmas I drove along some bumpy roads littered with potholes, particularly in the eastern suburbs by the Avon River and the estuary.  There are still many damaged and unoccupied homes, and tagging has sprung up everywhere. My parents' house remains unfixed, with boarded up windows and taped up cracks in the walls. It's sad to see, and I feel for my Mum and Dad not being able to do anything to speed up the process of getting repairs done. Thankfully some progress is slowly being made and the major repairs may start within a year or so.

Unofficial road sign

The photos below show the scarcely believable current state of the central city. So many buildings have been demolished, and there are still many left to be pulled down, with over 70% of the central city scheduled for destruction. Looking at the pictures, it is hard to even recognise which street is which, the layout has changed so much.

Despite the sadness of seeing the city I grew up with being torn down, it's exciting to think of the amazing opportunity which now exists for the city planners. Central Christchurch can be rebuilt from scratch, and there is great potential to make it one of the most modern and environmentally friendly cities in the world! Obviously it will take many years to rebuild the city into what it once was, but in 10 years or so, Christchurch will surely be a great place to live again (that's as long as it remains earthquake free...). There's a plan already in place for the rebuild, and a short video outlining the basics can be seen by clicking on this link, where more detailed information can also be found. I'm sure I will move back and live there sometime in the coming years, and I can't wait to see what it will look like then.

Looking at what's left of the cathedral and the central city

Another angle of the central city

New Zealand Holiday

I had been looking forward to my trip back to New Zealand for the Christmas and New Year's holiday since I booked my flights in August, especially having been away from home for around 15 months longer than ever before. But before I could arrive home and celebrate with my family and friends I had some pretty hardcore travelling to do - a full 72 hours from leaving my home in Baton Rouge to arriving at my parents' house in Christchurch (and this isn't even including the time lost due to time zone changes). I stayed overnight at my friend's house in New Orleans and set off for the airport at 4 am in the morning, flying to Los Angeles. I had an eleven hour stopover in LAX which was pretty boring and then it was on to a long flight over the Pacific to Sydney. Luckily I managed to sleep well on that flight thanks to the empty seat beside me and lack of any quality movies on offer.

When I landed I was well rested, and so I spent my Christmas Day wandering around Sydney to make the most of my thirteen hour stopover. This was pretty cool as I had never seen Sydney before, although the cloudy and cool weather wasn't exactly what I was expecting from Australia in summer. It was quite surreal, being Christmas day, and with nobody around I wandered by the Sydney Opera House, Government House, through the botanical gardens, up to Hyde Park, and then back down to Darling Harbour, where the rain began to pour down on the increasing amount of people and the many inflatable Santas. It seemed like a cool city from the one day I spent there, and one day I'll hopefully to return to watch a cricket game at the SCG. I took a lot of photos, some of which can be seen in the slide show below.
 
After arriving in Christchurch I spent Boxing Day with my family, having a traditional Christmas feast (only one day late due to my flight). It was great to see everyone! That night I went out for a few beers with my closest friends, one of which I hadn't seen since he moved to England six years ago (the English accent he had picked up was crazy), and another childhood friend I hadn't seen for a similar amount of time. The next morning I was off to Arthur's Pass to climb a mountain. I was tagging along on a trip to celebrate the achievement of five of Dad's friends, who traversed the Southern Alps from Arthur's Pass to Mt. Cook over a period of 17 days, 40 years ago - a pretty extraordinary feat considering they were all university students at the time. One of the members of that team had kept a typed-up notebook detailing everything about the journey which made for great reading. We originally planned to climb Mt. Philistine (to replicate the first day of their trip) but the weather didn't cooperate so we decided to climb the slightly less challenging Mt. Temple instead. Mt. Temple is still 1913 metres, and functions as a club ski-field in the winter. It was a great experience and the toughest climb I have done yet, with even a small snow section near the top of the peak. Sadly the cloud didn't clear throughout the day to give us any spectacular views, but it was still nice to be back in the New Zealand mountains.
 
The next great time to be had during my visit came during a New Year's camping trip at Okains Bay on Banks Peninsula. Nearly all of my best friends through high school and university were all together for the first time in around seven years, which was crazy! Friends had come from all over the world to be in Christchurch, including Boston, Leeds, London, Perth, and Auckland. We spent three nights hanging out around the sweet campsite, doing the usual stuff we used to do back at high school and university. This meant playing lots of sports (force back, beach cricket, football, kick ball), drinking games, swimming, fishing for flounder (we caught one), visiting Akaroa, cooking BBQs, and just catching up with friends we hadn't seen in awhile. Many good times were had, but some highlights included Greg's goalkeeping in football, Ash Neale's birthday cake, The Hobbit popcorn bucket, sleeping under the stars, and an epic final night culminating in the communal tent almost blowing over in the strong wind. Sadly it was time to head home, saying goodbye to some friends, and taking in Hickory Bay and Hinewai Reserve on the way back. Plans are already in place for the next reunion in five years time...this time in the Bahamas!


After somehow returning from Okains Bay with my liver intact, Mum and Dad decided it would be a good idea to go on a sea kayaking trip - at 8 am the very next day! We headed up north to the Marlborough Sounds, one of many picturesque places in the South Island. We paddled in Pelorus Sound, and our route can be seen on the map below, with some pictures too. The first day was pretty cruisy other than a little wind, heading north from Moetapu Bay. We stayed at Pipi Beach campsite, a tiny bit of grass right beside the beach and only reachable by water. At 7:30 the next morning we set off, paddling further up the sound. Some little blue penguins were the highlight of the morning as we paddled into South East Bay to visit Dad's friend Stephen at his family bach. The bach was unbelievable - it seemed more like a five-star resort! The place could sleep around 30 people, had a spa pool, its own jetty for fishing off, a forestry block, farm complete with shearing shed, and all sorts of exciting things to do. We hung around most of the afternoon while the wind was too strong to paddle comfortably, getting a tour around the huge block of land, eating lunch, and fishing off the jetty. Once the wind had died down, we got back in our kayaks and made our way to the campsite for that night at Otatara Bay, paddling through a strong crosswind which left us exhausted by the end of the day. After a solid sleep, the next morning provided one of the highlights of the trip, visiting a colony of Australasian gannets and their fledglings. This was a really cool experience as you could paddle right up to the colony and watch as the parents came in to feed their chick, causing the fledgling gannets to squawk like crazy in the hope the food was coming their way. We then began to cruise back the way we had come, taking a quick break at the beautiful Jacob's Bay, stopping for the night again at Pipi Beach, and then taking it easy the next morning, checking out the wildlife (a seal, shags, shearwaters, and some large sting rays), and visiting Mum's friends at another bach. It was a great trip, capped off with fish and chips in Kaikoura!


When I wasn't climbing mountains, camping, or sea kayaking, I spent a bit of time hanging out with friends and family in Christchurch. I checked out the central city where demolitions are still going on following the earthquakes of the last two years, spent an afternoon at the beach, had countless BBQs, called in for cake day at Plant and Food Research, and visited my awesome grandparents as much as possible (Grandad received a card from the Prime Minister John Key for his 99th birthday). It was just great to be home again!
 
I owe a huge thank you to all my friends, and especially my family, who made the visit back home so enjoyable! I can't wait to be back living in New Zealand sometime in the coming years. As my good friend Richard said while we were both back visiting, "You don't realise just how awesome New Zealand is until you leave"; truer words have never been spoken.

Home

I found this really cool video of Christchurch the other day. It was taken before the earthquakes and shows just how awesome the city is!

February 22, 2011, 12:51 pm

Today is the one-year anniversary of the Christchurch earthquake. When I say the Christchurch earthquake, I mean the one at 12:51 pm on February 22 2011 which resulted in 185 lives being lost. This is because since the first major earthquake on September 4 2010 there has been nearly 10, 000 earthquakes and counting, some big but many small. You can see a massive amount of information on all these quakes on the great Canterbury Quake Live website.

The September earthquake registered at 7.1 magnitude and was the largest Christchurch has felt. Fortunately, it was located just out of the city, it's depth was 10.5 km, and it occurred at 4:35 am when everyone was in bed. While this quake still destroyed some parts of the city (including my beloved hockey grounds as you can see below), this certainly limited the damage it was able to do and miraculously no lives were lost. Damage to my parents' house was virtually nonexistent and it took only 30 minutes to pick things up off the floor. Most of the city considered itself extremely lucky and life resembled normality for most within a month or so.

Porritt Park hockey turfs are no longer usable

After over five months with mostly minor aftershocks, most of Christchurch was lulled into a false sense of security, believing the worst was over. This all changed that day in the 24 seconds that the earth shook. The magnitude of the quake was only 6.3, but it was located almost directly under the city, and only 6 km deep. The quake spread across the city at 3 km per second with terrifying force. I still vividly remember everything down to the smallest detail. My story is that I was in the lunch room with all my workmates at Plant and Food Research out in Lincoln, some way from the center of the quake. Yet, when it hit we immediately knew it was gonna be a big one (you kind of got a feeling for this after so many quakes since the September one). We all dived under tables, door frames, or anything we could find to protect ourselves but luckily the damage to our building was minimal. As far as we knew at that point it was just a large quake and perhaps the city had gotten off lightly again. Of course we immediately tried to contact our friends and family, but this was difficult as power had been lost to so many places, making for a very worrying few minutes until we heard from people one way or another. Thankfully all of my close friends and family were safe, and I'm still thankful for that.

The first inkling I had that this was worse than the September quake was when my sister rang me to say that her friend in the central city was pulling dead bodies out of rubble and that our iconic cathedral had collapsed. I remember telling this awful news to my workmates and seeing the looks of disbelief and horror on their faces. Eventually I left work and headed to my sister's house near the city center where I met her and my Mum. We sat in her house for a few hours feeling the earth shake every few minutes as aftershocks kept rumbling through. I was restless and wracked with nervous energy so I took my sister's bike and rode around to survey some of the damage, and it wasn't good...

Some relatively minor inner-city devastation

Dad had decided to try to get home with a workmate who also lived nearby even though the road home was closed due to rockfalls and bridge closures. He ended up having to walk most of the way and eventually called us to let us know the road had been reopened and that we could head home, but to be ready for a shock. While nothing compared to the damage done to some other Cantabrian's homes and lives, the damage to my parents' and my childhood home was still severe. Upon arriving home we found the house in a total mess. Anything that could have possibly fallen was on the ground, windows were broken, plaster was cracked, a wall had collapsed, water tanks had fallen over, it was just total carnage as can be seen in the photos below. We felt we had to clean the house, just to try to return to some sort of normality, and started on it right away. The cleaning process took over three days with multiple people working and was made even harder by not having water or power for well over a week. We then had to move out of the house for several weeks until it was inspected and declared safe. This was the worst time of all, but thankfully our house was green-stickered meaning it's safe to live in and will eventually be rebuilt. Our neighbours were not so lucky however, the second story of their house collapsed completely; a reminder of just how lucky we were.

First view of the kitchen

The lounge

Cracks in the plaster everywhere

Collapsed wall on the patio

The garage

My room after the quake

My room after half a day of cleaning

The house next door

My Nana and Grandad's house with almost knee-deep liquefaction surrounding it 

Half a house at the bottom of the hill I lived on

As for repairs and insurance, it's a frustratingly slow process for many people. The EQC (Earthquake Commission) is "a New Zealand Government agency providing natural disaster insurance to residential property owners". Unfortunately, it has become a bit of a joke. One year after the quake and my parents have still not had their insurance claims approved. This means they have not been able to rebuild any of the house. Walls have been replaced with plywood. Windows are still boarded up. Only minor repairs have been able to be made. My parents describe it as living in a cave and are now resigned to the fact they will be spending another cold winter in a drafty house. Over 20 people have looked at their insurance claims, yet none have done anything about it, and I know they're not the only people in the same boat as many people are sick of the way the situation has been handled. On the other hand, I really admire the amazing way in which the Japanese authorities have handled the the rebuilding process following their own even more devastating earthquake. You can see some unbelievable before and after photos of that here. I just wish the authorities in New Zealand were able to work so efficiently.


All in all, the Christchurch earthquake(s) is something I will never forget. That 24 seconds affected everyone's life in an unforgettable way and burned images into our memories forever. My heart goes out to all those who lost their job, home, a friend or family member. The earthquakes have changed our city forever, but I am still proud to call Christchurch home. 

You can see an excellent tribute page with loads of additional information at this link. 

Kia Kaha Christchurch!

Snow

It's just under two weeks until I begin my big adventure in the United States, so it's awesome timing for the largest snowfall in Christchurch for 15 years.

I went to bed with the backyard looking like this:

And then we woke up to this:

Mum and Dad decided that after living on Clifton Hill for 28 years, it was finally time to snowboard down it! So we made a video to remember the occasion: