Quake City

From Kentish Downs to Southern Alps: on 3rd February, we were hugely excited to be on the way to visiting the 16th country of our tour and the furthest from home. In our first post, we admitted to feeling a little like hobbits on the way to Mordor; now we were arriving in the country chosen to film said Tolkien sagas!

Before starting this leg of our adventure in earnest, though, we first had to confront a nightmare that has been largely forgotten by the world: the tragedy of the Christchurch earthquake. On 22nd February 2011, the Cantabrian earth shook and 185 people died as buildings collapsed around them. Still, one doesn't appreciate the scale of such an event until one has been there. Three years later, we were shocked to see the extent of the devastation wreaked and how the city is still struggling to cope with, and recover from, the aftermath.

We probably had the impression that only fairly small area was badly affected. How wrong we were. The Central Business District was, and remains, devastated, but we saw significantly damaged buildings in a radius of several miles. We could see what a beautiful city that Christchurch was. The Avon river, still meanders gently through it, bordered by lush meadows and weeping willows. But the once proud cathedral spire has crumbled, the remains grimly clinging to scaffolding like a punch drunk boxer. Nearly all of the main buildings in the centre either came down in the quake and it's after shocks, have subsequently been demolished, or stand eerily boarded and fenced awaiting demolition or repair. We trudged in disbelief through the centre of a city still swathed in dust and eerie silence.

After 3 years, we had expected that the city would have returned much more towards normality than this, but the complete rebuilding of a city will take much longer yet. The practicalities are endless: helping people through their immediate problems: assessing the damage; closing off dangerous areas; providing short term shelter; re-connecting power and sanitation facilities (a huge job in itself, as much of this infrastructure was destroyed or damaged); demolishing; creating new plans; ensuring that there is a framework to do all of this in a co-ordinated manner; obtaining finance and only then starting the process of rebuilding.

There are some signs that a Phoenix is starting to emerge from the ashes, such as the main shopping street which was largely flattened but has started trading again from make-shift portacabins and converted shipping containers. How much longer though to repair it's damaged spirit? The people that we spoke to seem to be pretty phlegmatic and the economic and social activities of the city seem to have simply moved from the centre to the suburbs, but our view is that a city like Christchurch (with 400,000 people and the only sizeable city on the South Island) needs and deserves a heart. So, our sincerest best wishes go out to the people of Christchurch that they can rebuild and revitalise their once beautiful city.

We will finish this post on that note and next time fill you in on the wonderful alpine scenery that we have started exploring here.