For Christchurch residents, it seems for every monumental 'if' there is a cascade of 'buts' and 'maybes'.
It’s early Monday morning – day 13 – and a frigid southerly is still dragging its tail through the streets of Christchurch. After the desiccating nor’wester of last week, it rained hard on Saturday night and through most of Sunday, turning Waitaki St, in the suburb of Bexley, into a series of putrid ponds. Silt shovelled from roads and around houses sits in big piles on the kerbside waiting to be collected by trucks. The rain has turned the residue on footpaths and gutters into a gluey grey muck.
A lone motorcycle policeman pulls into the street and picks his way carefully around the flooded craters before dismounting. Listener photographer David White and I have parked our push-bikes so as to better absorb the bleak desolation that surrounds us.
The constable eyes us up cautiously. The three of us are the only people on the street. We are surrounded by empty houses, many of them leaning slightly to one side, sunk on their foundations or cracked through their brickwork. The policeman, Senior Constable Davitt Lavery, tells us he thinks only about four people are still in residence here. He wears a look of strain and says of himself and his colleagues: “We are just shattered.”
He is calling to check on his 74-year-old friend, Brian Frisken, who lives in Mitcham Place, a small adjacent cul-de-sac, and has been without power, water and sewerage for almost two weeks. We, too, decide to drop in on Brian, and find he’s doing well in very trying circumstances. Tall, ramrod-straight and with a memorably firm handshake, Brian was watching True Grit at the Reading Cinema in the nearby suburb of Shirley when the earthquake hit. Mattie Ross had just fallen into the snake pit, and Rooster Cogburn had not yet rescued her. “I missed the climax,” he says. “I’ll have to go and see it again.”
Bits of the cinema roof rained down, leaving him with a massive purple bruise on his leg. It took two-and-a-half hours in chaotic traffic to drive the short distance home, which was surrounded by sludge. His car ended up in a hole, and he had to wade through the gluggy stuff up to his knees. He dug out the car and shovelled the silt from around his house, although an army of farmers from Matamata and Te Puke turned up a few days later to help. “Marvellous,” he says. “I sent them next door to my neighbour.”
He has been provided with a chemical toilet that sits on his back porch, and which he empties into deep holes in the garden. He gets water from New Brighton; his children have furnished him with gas cooking equipment; and he showers and does his washing at his brother’s place in Woolston. Later on that Monday night, Lavery popped back in with a small generator, and we learn on Tuesday morning the power has been restored.
He feels well-supported, and says families with young children who have lost their homes face much greater hardship. Still, he says, it’s been “eerie at night with no power. Every little noise, you wonder. But I keep myself busy. I’ve been cutting the hedges and keeping the place tidy.”
The Earthquake Commission (EQC) has declared the small house liveable. It certainly looks more solid than many, although the brickwork is cracked and it seems to have jumped about 10cm from its rightful position.
Frisken sometimes pops over the Avon River (effectively an open sewer since the quake destroyed sewerage pipes and pump stations on this side of town) for a sausage sizzle or stir-fry, which are among the services provided in New Brighton by local churches. At Central New Brighton School the Grace Vineyard Church, in partnership with the New Brighton police, established a “pop-up” food bank the day after the quake. Because the local supermarket was unable to open, people without transport had no way of getting food or water, explains Glenn France, a church member and one of an energetic throng of volunteers. Food has been sent in from around the country – one truck driver from Taupo called for donations in his hometown and had a full load within half an hour; another man drove a party bus full of food from Wellington.
France says the plan is to scale back the operation when the local Countdown gets up and running again. He estimates that, at its peak, the food bank was feeding 10,000 people a day.
One of those in the queue today is Barbara Kerr, whose Aranui household of five is without power and water, and whose street has no portaloo. They can’t easily access the internet for essential information, either, because their laptop was crushed by a falling bookcase. Their car was ruined by rising silt as they fled the Palms shopping mall on February 22.
Having lived in Christchurch for seven years, they’ve decided to get out. They plan to sell their damaged house and head home to Australia. “It [the house] was worth $240,000 in normal times, but we will probably get $80,000. The buyer will get the insurance policy and EQC number,” she says.
Outside the foodbank the queue has lengthened and people are hunched against the squally weather. It’s a desolate scene. So is the empty New Brighton shopping centre further down the street. Nothing is open and a security guard tells me only a handful of shops have managed to trade in the last fortnight. The Quiksilver surf shop was badly looted in the hours after the quake because they couldn’t close their doors.
As the morning wears on, the sun breaks through and the mood lifts. By lunchtime the atmosphere on the street feels like a Saturday farmers’ market. There’s free food and drink, and people are milling around and chatting. A wireless hotspot has been set up so that people without services at home can get online. Outside a natural remedies shop Graham O’Gorman is offering free stress-relief and immune-boosting sessions with his “bioptron light therapy” machine, which projects coloured light beams onto my forehead. I tell him it sounds like hocus-pocus, but he’s not offended and says he’s been using it to help the police, fire crews and forensic teams involved in the recovery operation.
As we head back through Aranui towards the CBD, we bump into a big group digging silt out of a backyard in an otherwise-deserted Shortland St. Even now, two weeks on, there are still properties to be cleared of the effects of liquefaction. The leaders of this volunteer effort are Alofa Noa, the pastor of the Faith and Life Changing Ministry, and his wife, Se’epa Fa’aoso-Noa. As well as barrowing out masses of silt, they’ve released the homeowner’s stranded car from the muck. “He was really grateful,” says Se’epa.
She and her husband have taken three extra families into their home since the quake, even though they have no power, water or nearby portaloo. Twenty-two people – including five children under five – are sharing their three-bedroom house. She says some may eventually be able to return to their own homes, but “at the moment they feel more secure with us. We are just learning to get on and be content.”
This week, Prime Minister John Key said 10,000 houses in Christ-church may have to be demolished, and some suburbs badly affected by silt may be abandoned. Some 100,000 houses are said to be damaged but no one yet knows the true extent of the wreckage because these houses have had little more than a cursory inspection and evaluation of land has barely begun. Some abandoned houses may be patched up and made liveable again, and some that are still occupied may turn out to be structurally unsafe. Everything is changing and uncertain, and every day brings a new version of reality.
But the vicious southerly that ripped through the city over the weekend is a reminder of the one solid fact in this whole violent upheaval. Winter is coming. And we don’t yet know where all the people who can no longer live in their own homes will spend the dark months ahead.
Mayor Bob Parker says there is ample land around the city green belt for new housing. But it will take months or probably years to launch new subdivisions. What about the next few weeks, when displaced people look to leave the temporary shelter of friends, family and the farther-flung locations to which many fled in the aftermath? Where will people sleep, cook their dinner and do their homework when Christchurch is clamped in the grim jaws of June, July, August and September?
Civil Defence chief John Hamilton says there is a range of options. They want to avoid, “at all costs”, having people in tents. Construction of temporary “bach-like” buildings is a possibility, although there is no word on where or how long it will take. Housing Minister Phil Heatley says where displaced people can’t find their own place to live, the Government could lease camper vans and cabins in holiday parks and rent these out. “We are conscious of the whole issue of not creating ghettos, and we don’t want to lock up land with temporary housing where more permanent housing may be suited,” he told Radio NZ National’s Morning Report.
Parker says people may need to make temporary repairs to, and move back into, homes they might now think are uninhabitable – including, presumably, some of those his own council has declared unsafe by tagging with yellow or red stickers.
But there are now questions over how much the council can and should spend on repairing smashed-up sewerage and water infrastructure in suburbs the Prime Minister thinks will be abandoned. Parker says the council intends to repair all infrastructure “where is, but if the EQC and their consultants come back with a different approach, obviously we will start planning for that”.
It seems for every monumental “if” there is a cascade of “buts” and “maybes”. In the meantime, people in undamaged areas will need to chip in, Parker says. “Some parts of the city are less damaged than others. You need to do an assessment – if you have a shed or building out the back, or some temporary housing, what can you do for the people in the most damaged areas? We have had a great response from our communities. We need to keep that up. It’s essential at this time.”
Tui Fa’asina is taking no chances. Since the quake she, husband Fili and two-month-old baby Samuel have been living in a tent on the lawn of their flat in Salisbury St in the central city. Tui was downstairs and Samuel was asleep upstairs in his cot when the earthquake ripped cracks through the walls and upended the kitchen. ‘
They borrowed a tent, which they have furnished with bed, table and TV. Power supply to the flat has been uninterrupted throughout, so they have been able to run a cable from the building. They had water to the house from day five, enabling them to wash and use the toilet. Everything in the tent is neat and tidy, but Tui is looking forward to moving soon into the home of her uncle’s boss, who has offered them spare bedrooms at his house in Rolleston, just south of Christchurch and near her husband’s work at The Warehouse’s distribution centre. She is grateful they still have an income. Their aim is to get a deposit together and buy in Rolleston.
One thing is certain, she says: “We can’t stay here.”
‘We are just shattered’
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For Christchurch residents, it seems for every monumental 'if' there is a cascade of 'buts' and 'maybes'.
Waitaki St
David White
Brian Frisken
David White
Without a home
David White
Pipe works
David White
Linwood suburb
David White
Chrischurch CBD
David White
It’s early Monday morning – day 13 – and a frigid southerly is still dragging its tail through the streets of Christchurch. After the desiccating nor’wester of last week, it rained hard on Saturday night and through most of Sunday, turning Waitaki St, in the suburb of Bexley, into a series of putrid ponds. Silt shovelled from roads and around houses sits in big piles on the kerbside waiting to be collected by trucks. The rain has turned the residue on footpaths and gutters into a gluey grey muck.
A lone motorcycle policeman pulls into the street and picks his way carefully around the flooded craters before dismounting. Listener photographer David White and I have parked our push-bikes so as to better absorb the bleak desolation that surrounds us.
The constable eyes us up cautiously. The three of us are the only people on the street. We are surrounded by empty houses, many of them leaning slightly to one side, sunk on their foundations or cracked through their brickwork. The policeman, Senior Constable Davitt Lavery, tells us he thinks only about four people are still in residence here. He wears a look of strain and says of himself and his colleagues: “We are just shattered.”
He is calling to check on his 74-year-old friend, Brian Frisken, who lives in Mitcham Place, a small adjacent cul-de-sac, and has been without power, water and sewerage for almost two weeks. We, too, decide to drop in on Brian, and find he’s doing well in very trying circumstances. Tall, ramrod-straight and with a memorably firm handshake, Brian was watching True Grit at the Reading Cinema in the nearby suburb of Shirley when the earthquake hit. Mattie Ross had just fallen into the snake pit, and Rooster Cogburn had not yet rescued her. “I missed the climax,” he says. “I’ll have to go and see it again.”
Bits of the cinema roof rained down, leaving him with a massive purple bruise on his leg. It took two-and-a-half hours in chaotic traffic to drive the short distance home, which was surrounded by sludge. His car ended up in a hole, and he had to wade through the gluggy stuff up to his knees. He dug out the car and shovelled the silt from around his house, although an army of farmers from Matamata and Te Puke turned up a few days later to help. “Marvellous,” he says. “I sent them next door to my neighbour.”
He has been provided with a chemical toilet that sits on his back porch, and which he empties into deep holes in the garden. He gets water from New Brighton; his children have furnished him with gas cooking equipment; and he showers and does his washing at his brother’s place in Woolston. Later on that Monday night, Lavery popped back in with a small generator, and we learn on Tuesday morning the power has been restored.
He feels well-supported, and says families with young children who have lost their homes face much greater hardship. Still, he says, it’s been “eerie at night with no power. Every little noise, you wonder. But I keep myself busy. I’ve been cutting the hedges and keeping the place tidy.”
The Earthquake Commission (EQC) has declared the small house liveable. It certainly looks more solid than many, although the brickwork is cracked and it seems to have jumped about 10cm from its rightful position.
Frisken sometimes pops over the Avon River (effectively an open sewer since the quake destroyed sewerage pipes and pump stations on this side of town) for a sausage sizzle or stir-fry, which are among the services provided in New Brighton by local churches. At Central New Brighton School the Grace Vineyard Church, in partnership with the New Brighton police, established a “pop-up” food bank the day after the quake. Because the local supermarket was unable to open, people without transport had no way of getting food or water, explains Glenn France, a church member and one of an energetic throng of volunteers. Food has been sent in from around the country – one truck driver from Taupo called for donations in his hometown and had a full load within half an hour; another man drove a party bus full of food from Wellington.
France says the plan is to scale back the operation when the local Countdown gets up and running again. He estimates that, at its peak, the food bank was feeding 10,000 people a day.
One of those in the queue today is Barbara Kerr, whose Aranui household of five is without power and water, and whose street has no portaloo. They can’t easily access the internet for essential information, either, because their laptop was crushed by a falling bookcase. Their car was ruined by rising silt as they fled the Palms shopping mall on February 22.
Having lived in Christchurch for seven years, they’ve decided to get out. They plan to sell their damaged house and head home to Australia. “It [the house] was worth $240,000 in normal times, but we will probably get $80,000. The buyer will get the insurance policy and EQC number,” she says.
Outside the foodbank the queue has lengthened and people are hunched against the squally weather. It’s a desolate scene. So is the empty New Brighton shopping centre further down the street. Nothing is open and a security guard tells me only a handful of shops have managed to trade in the last fortnight. The Quiksilver surf shop was badly looted in the hours after the quake because they couldn’t close their doors.
As the morning wears on, the sun breaks through and the mood lifts. By lunchtime the atmosphere on the street feels like a Saturday farmers’ market. There’s free food and drink, and people are milling around and chatting. A wireless hotspot has been set up so that people without services at home can get online. Outside a natural remedies shop Graham O’Gorman is offering free stress-relief and immune-boosting sessions with his “bioptron light therapy” machine, which projects coloured light beams onto my forehead. I tell him it sounds like hocus-pocus, but he’s not offended and says he’s been using it to help the police, fire crews and forensic teams involved in the recovery operation.
As we head back through Aranui towards the CBD, we bump into a big group digging silt out of a backyard in an otherwise-deserted Shortland St. Even now, two weeks on, there are still properties to be cleared of the effects of liquefaction. The leaders of this volunteer effort are Alofa Noa, the pastor of the Faith and Life Changing Ministry, and his wife, Se’epa Fa’aoso-Noa. As well as barrowing out masses of silt, they’ve released the homeowner’s stranded car from the muck. “He was really grateful,” says Se’epa.
She and her husband have taken three extra families into their home since the quake, even though they have no power, water or nearby portaloo. Twenty-two people – including five children under five – are sharing their three-bedroom house. She says some may eventually be able to return to their own homes, but “at the moment they feel more secure with us. We are just learning to get on and be content.”
This week, Prime Minister John Key said 10,000 houses in Christ-church may have to be demolished, and some suburbs badly affected by silt may be abandoned. Some 100,000 houses are said to be damaged but no one yet knows the true extent of the wreckage because these houses have had little more than a cursory inspection and evaluation of land has barely begun. Some abandoned houses may be patched up and made liveable again, and some that are still occupied may turn out to be structurally unsafe. Everything is changing and uncertain, and every day brings a new version of reality.
But the vicious southerly that ripped through the city over the weekend is a reminder of the one solid fact in this whole violent upheaval. Winter is coming. And we don’t yet know where all the people who can no longer live in their own homes will spend the dark months ahead.
Mayor Bob Parker says there is ample land around the city green belt for new housing. But it will take months or probably years to launch new subdivisions. What about the next few weeks, when displaced people look to leave the temporary shelter of friends, family and the farther-flung locations to which many fled in the aftermath? Where will people sleep, cook their dinner and do their homework when Christchurch is clamped in the grim jaws of June, July, August and September?
Civil Defence chief John Hamilton says there is a range of options. They want to avoid, “at all costs”, having people in tents. Construction of temporary “bach-like” buildings is a possibility, although there is no word on where or how long it will take. Housing Minister Phil Heatley says where displaced people can’t find their own place to live, the Government could lease camper vans and cabins in holiday parks and rent these out. “We are conscious of the whole issue of not creating ghettos, and we don’t want to lock up land with temporary housing where more permanent housing may be suited,” he told Radio NZ National’s Morning Report.
Parker says people may need to make temporary repairs to, and move back into, homes they might now think are uninhabitable – including, presumably, some of those his own council has declared unsafe by tagging with yellow or red stickers.
But there are now questions over how much the council can and should spend on repairing smashed-up sewerage and water infrastructure in suburbs the Prime Minister thinks will be abandoned. Parker says the council intends to repair all infrastructure “where is, but if the EQC and their consultants come back with a different approach, obviously we will start planning for that”.
It seems for every monumental “if” there is a cascade of “buts” and “maybes”. In the meantime, people in undamaged areas will need to chip in, Parker says. “Some parts of the city are less damaged than others. You need to do an assessment – if you have a shed or building out the back, or some temporary housing, what can you do for the people in the most damaged areas? We have had a great response from our communities. We need to keep that up. It’s essential at this time.”
Tui Fa’asina is taking no chances. Since the quake she, husband Fili and two-month-old baby Samuel have been living in a tent on the lawn of their flat in Salisbury St in the central city. Tui was downstairs and Samuel was asleep upstairs in his cot when the earthquake ripped cracks through the walls and upended the kitchen. ‘
They borrowed a tent, which they have furnished with bed, table and TV. Power supply to the flat has been uninterrupted throughout, so they have been able to run a cable from the building. They had water to the house from day five, enabling them to wash and use the toilet. Everything in the tent is neat and tidy, but Tui is looking forward to moving soon into the home of her uncle’s boss, who has offered them spare bedrooms at his house in Rolleston, just south of Christchurch and near her husband’s work at The Warehouse’s distribution centre. She is grateful they still have an income. Their aim is to get a deposit together and buy in Rolleston.
One thing is certain, she says: “We can’t stay here.”