Christchurch Earthquake bulletin edition 77

Christchurch Labour MPs

18 July 2011

Christchurch Earthquake bulletin edition 77

The Labour Party’s Christchurch electorate MPs, Clayton Cosgrove (Waimakariri), Ruth Dyson (Port Hills), Lianne Dalziel (Christchurch East) and Brendon Burns (Christchurch Central) have started a regular bulletin to keep people in their electorates and media informed about what is happening at grass roots level.

CLAYTON COSGROVE: I spent the weekend visiting homes across my electorate to see how people were coping. I came across two disturbing situations. The first relates to urgent repair work by Fletcher’s and the EQC. I was confronted by a lady who had had her brick chimney removed up to roof level, as is the norm, because it was structurally unstable. However, the work is not complete. What remains is a mess so unstable and unsafe that the woman, who lives with her young child, can simply pick remaining bricks away by hand. While I was there bricks and wood littered her living area, where, in the absence of any assistance from Fletcher’s and the EQC, the woman had tried to stabilise the chimney herself. She has asked both Fletcher’s and the EQC to come back to finish the emergency repair and alleges they haven’t. She is concerned for the safety of her child and has been hit by a brick herself trying to get the job done. I encountered another case relating to outstanding emergency repairs where a couple has been trying to finalise the emergency repair of an elevated water tank with a cracked foundation. The couple have young children and one on the way and are concerned the unstable tank will fall on their house in another aftershock. They have had an endless stream of assessors, all confirming the tank needs to come down, but nothing has been done. I personally notified EQC weeks prior to this visit and am disappointed in the lack of progress. While I am aware each of these examples is an individual case, I don’t believe these struggles stray too far from the norm. I remain very concerned about the processes in place for emergency repairs. People’s fears are substantiated, we have just had another 4.4 aftershock and emergency repairs must be paramount. Lastly, CERA have two community liaison meetings in my electorate tonight discussing the rebuild of Christchurch. While I think it is appropriate that they get out in the community the people of Kaiapoi need hard facts on their rebuild given they have been stalled and remain stalled. I will be going along to hear what CERA have to say.

RUTH DYSON: I had a fantastic end to last week, with the successful retrieval of all the books, historic records, the classic clock and membership records from the St Martin’s library. An amazing group of volunteers turned up, including classes from Hillview Christian School and St Martin’s school. It was so satisfying to save something (again) instead of watching it all be destroyed. The challenge now is to find new locations for our displaced community libraries. On Friday I also attended a presentation by the Telecom Foundation at Sumner School. The Foundation aims to give young people a voice in policy making, and took the students through some exercises including what was good and what was bad in their lives (boiled brussel sprouts were dreaded more than earthquakes!). On another fun note, the principals of the school had recognised what a long hard term it has been and finished the term with a ‘wear your pyjamas and have a funny hairdo’ day -spectacular! CERA has just started the next round of public consultation on the Recovery Strategy and I attended their meeting in Lyttelton. It wasn’t as well attended as the local ones have been, but there was a good number of people as well as passionate and spirited discussion. There are a few more of these meetings over the coming week and I will be interested to hear of the outcome of all the discussions.

LIANNE DALZIEL: In 1991 a Japanese survey of people, asked whether they thought a big earthquake could occur in their region, found less than 10% of the population in the Hyogo Prefecture thought they were at risk. So four years later when the Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake struck on 17 January at 5.46am, they weren’t prepared. At 16km depth and a magnitude of 7.3, the 10 seconds of shaking caused buildings and structures to collapse, leaving 6,402 dead and just over 40,000 people injured. The lack of preparedness and the consequences that followed have acted as a catalyst for Hyogo Prefecture to become a world leader in disaster management, risk reduction and recovery. I visited Kobe last Friday. A combination of local and international expertise has sprung up around The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Memorial Disaster Reduction & Human Renovation Institution in the city. Opened in April 2002, the Institution has six main functions, including training of disaster management practitioners, the dispatch of disaster management experts to disaster areas and the collection and preservation of source documents and materials. I visited several of the 15 regional, national and international organisations that have co-located within the Institution. As it’s difficult to summarise the wealth of information I garnered in a short bulletin, I will be writing a report which I intend to submit to the Council and the Government. If there is anywhere in the world that we should be looking to for the expertise we will need in the years to come, it is Kobe. The Hyogo Framework for Action, adopted by the UN World Conference on Disaster Relief, reinforces the central role the community has in recovery, and it reminds us that the phases of relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction following a disaster are windows of opportunity for the rebuilding of livelihoods and for the planning and reconstruction of physical and socio-economic structures, in a way that will build community resilience and reduce vulnerability to future disaster risks.

BRENDON BURNS: An update on land issues came on Friday night at a cottage meeting with orange zoned residents in Retreat Rd, Avonside. Jan Kupec, a CERA geo-tech engineer, talked about the issues that go into consideration in deciding what zoning is applied to land. He uses a sponge cake example - lateral spreading is when the top of the sponge cake slides around and liquefaction is the result of the spongy custard layer coming up through the sponge and spurting through the top. The critical issue for land zoning is the depth of the crust of non-liquified soil. The closer homes are to the river, the thinner the crust. Basically, any land can be remediated if enough money is spent. Piles can be driven six metres down to stabilise houses and the thickness and strength of concrete floors can be increased. Jan said the Government's decisions centre on the time and cost of remediation. Therefore, the green zone is thought to be able to be remediated within a 12 month period, the red zone would take 3 to 5 years to remediate and decisions around the orange zone depend on whether land is reclassified as red or green. Jan said if areas like Retreat Rd's southern side are classed as green, it is possible that there would need to be major remediation work on the river bank - akin to the Great Walls of Canterbury proposed after the September quake, but only in selected areas. The Retreat Rd orange zone residents have done a survey showing at least half want to be classed as red. There are certainly a lot of people who don't want to live next to a red zone where demolition work will be on-going, not to mention their fears for what living alongside an abandoned area might do for their properties' value. Others are determined to tough it out and stay. It was encouraging to attend two CERA workshops allowing Cantabrians more say about the shape of their city. Yesterday around 200 people came to the Addington Events Centre to contribute ideas. The final two contributions said it all for me. One man said CERA must release all its reports publicly so everyone knows where things are heading, while another said the current level of engagement has to continue throughout. I would also like to say well done to the Gap Filler group who yesterday opened a public ‘library’ in a fridge on a vacant site in Barbadoes/Kilmore St, what an innovative idea!

ENDS