My latest time-machine travel (see previous post) took me to New Zealand on the first day of this year. It was December 30 when I boarded the plane in San Francisco, the morning of January 1when it landed in Auckland. New Year’s Eve had vanished. Gone without murmur or mention, let alone festivity. The nearest I came to any celebration was the sight of some bedraggled left-over revellers in Queen Street, the city’s main commercial thoroughfare.
Auckland is the country’s biggest urban area by very far, with about a third of the country’s entire population of some 4.4 million people. But it hasn’t been the seat of government since 1865, when the move was made to the more centrally located Wellington, the world’s most southerly capital city, where I have been for the past month. It is built on and between the steep slopes that surround one of the world’s biggest deep-sea harbours. Look up and you can see innumerable private homes and commercial buildings perched on the steep hillsides, often amid greenery. Very attractive – but for the fact that this is very much an earthquake-risk region with no fewer than four fault lines, one of them running through the city.
The last major quake may have been in the 1850s, but there have been two well above 4 on the Richter scale felt here since I arrived and the next really big bang could come tomorrow, next week, in a month’s time or many decades or scores of years from now. This has been known for a long time, of course, but minds have been sharpened by the Christchurch disaster on February 22 last year, when much of the centre of that city and thousands of homes were destroyed, or have had to be demolished. 185 people were killed, 115 of them in one high-rise building. And most of the devastation remains to be seen. And repaired.
A new report into the ability of Wellington to withstand an earthquake on a similar same scale estimates it would cost the economy 37 billion NZD (tens of billions of anyone’s money), that many important enterprises and the Government itself could be forced to leave, perhaps permanently, though little is said about the potentially devastating human cost. 435 city buildings have been identified as being particularly hazardous. Many are located along important roads so that the few routes into and out of the city could be blocked by rubble.
A map has been published marking in red streets at risk from what are termed ‘earthquake-prone’ buildings, while those 'potentially' at risk are in orange. If I look at the street where I am staying and where I am right now (in a high rise building)... I see it is in the darkest of reds.
Hmm...
Showing posts with label Christchurch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christchurch. Show all posts
Sunday, 19 February 2012
Friday, 4 March 2011
Christchurch
Eleven days after much of the Christchurch city centre and many people’s lives there and in neighbouring areas were shattered by an underground upheaval in this earthquake-prone country, the New Zealand media remain saturated with news of the disaster and its consequences. The rising death toll but diminishing number of missing persons; collapsed, precarious or demolished buildings; countless tales of tragedy, bravery, heroism, miraculous escapes; liquefaction and the huge amounts of toxic silt that spread far and wide; solidarity, people coming together, disaster funds, fund-raising events and collections, and so on have filled newsprint columns, radio and television programmes seemingly without end. Not everyone admires it all.
One columnist has written about ‘disaster porn’ that the media have been wallowing in. There have been objections to some of the more meaningless questions that have been asked. Have there been invasions of privacy? Intrusion into other people’s grief? On the other hand, many of those affected have clearly felt a need to speak out, to express emotion, to make their feelings known. Relief aid was not equally distributed. People in the eastern suburbs were aggrieved. Districts that had suffered less had received more. One street had but a single portable toilet for all its residents, though more were reportedly on their way. Water and power supplies have been getting back to near normal, but not sewage.
For me, the most incongruous feature of reporting from the stricken city has been the sight of on-the-spot television anchormen dressed in dark suits, spotless white shirts and neatly knotted ties, while behind them is a scene of utter devastation. And this in a country that has always had a reputation for being laid back and informal.
Now that the search and rescue operation has given way to ‘recovery’, with no survivors found since the day after the earthquake struck, other questions are being asked. How is it that quite modern buildings were unable to withstand a 6.3 earthquake (although the Richter Scale doesn't tell you how deep it was and this one was shallow, and close). Were the relevant standards adhered to? It has been stated many times that the fault lines in the area were not known until the earlier quake last September, which caused much damage, though not on the present scale, but no loss of life. This too has been queried. Were buildings adequately reinforced after September? How come that a building given a clean bill of health then, collapsed now?
If there was no known danger, the regulations wouldn’t have been as strict as in known danger zones - like the one I’m in right now, Wellington (we’ve had two sizeable quakes this week, 4.5 and 4.7 on the Richter scale, and smaller ones very often). But the building standards were revised in the 1970s. Old buildings would not have been covered, but as a letter-writer in Wellington’s morning newspaper The Dominion Post points out, most of the deaths were caused by the collapse of two of the more modern buildings. There are now realistic fears that all the city’s old and historic buildings will be pulled down and that it will lose its soul. There is also consternation that the Government intends taking advantage of the situation to push through unpopular measures, which include cutting welfare benefits and the partial sale of state assets on the pretext of having to raise money to cover the disaster costs, running into billions of anybody's money.
However, there is a General Election coming up in November, which puts the Opposition in a quandary. The nation must pull together at this time of emergency, so criticism of the National Party-led Government under former currency trader John Key, which cynics might say with some justification, is getting a lot of mileage out of the situation, is very muted. Labour leader Phil Goff barely gets a mention these days. So what is he to do?
One columnist has written about ‘disaster porn’ that the media have been wallowing in. There have been objections to some of the more meaningless questions that have been asked. Have there been invasions of privacy? Intrusion into other people’s grief? On the other hand, many of those affected have clearly felt a need to speak out, to express emotion, to make their feelings known. Relief aid was not equally distributed. People in the eastern suburbs were aggrieved. Districts that had suffered less had received more. One street had but a single portable toilet for all its residents, though more were reportedly on their way. Water and power supplies have been getting back to near normal, but not sewage.
For me, the most incongruous feature of reporting from the stricken city has been the sight of on-the-spot television anchormen dressed in dark suits, spotless white shirts and neatly knotted ties, while behind them is a scene of utter devastation. And this in a country that has always had a reputation for being laid back and informal.
Now that the search and rescue operation has given way to ‘recovery’, with no survivors found since the day after the earthquake struck, other questions are being asked. How is it that quite modern buildings were unable to withstand a 6.3 earthquake (although the Richter Scale doesn't tell you how deep it was and this one was shallow, and close). Were the relevant standards adhered to? It has been stated many times that the fault lines in the area were not known until the earlier quake last September, which caused much damage, though not on the present scale, but no loss of life. This too has been queried. Were buildings adequately reinforced after September? How come that a building given a clean bill of health then, collapsed now?
If there was no known danger, the regulations wouldn’t have been as strict as in known danger zones - like the one I’m in right now, Wellington (we’ve had two sizeable quakes this week, 4.5 and 4.7 on the Richter scale, and smaller ones very often). But the building standards were revised in the 1970s. Old buildings would not have been covered, but as a letter-writer in Wellington’s morning newspaper The Dominion Post points out, most of the deaths were caused by the collapse of two of the more modern buildings. There are now realistic fears that all the city’s old and historic buildings will be pulled down and that it will lose its soul. There is also consternation that the Government intends taking advantage of the situation to push through unpopular measures, which include cutting welfare benefits and the partial sale of state assets on the pretext of having to raise money to cover the disaster costs, running into billions of anybody's money.
However, there is a General Election coming up in November, which puts the Opposition in a quandary. The nation must pull together at this time of emergency, so criticism of the National Party-led Government under former currency trader John Key, which cynics might say with some justification, is getting a lot of mileage out of the situation, is very muted. Labour leader Phil Goff barely gets a mention these days. So what is he to do?
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