A year ago today, the Christchurch region shook like it had never done before[*]. Since then there have been something like 8000 recorded quakes, albeit most of them tiddlers that most people don't notice. In the two months we've been here, there have nevertheless been dozens that we've felt (we stopped counting weeks ago). Every one is different; some rumble, some jolt, some are very sudden while some go on for several seconds. We've lost count of what we've felt; like many Cantabrians we've started guessing at the magnitude and distance after feeling a quake.
[*] ObPedant: not in recorded history, anyway
This week has seen an upsurge in activity, with a Mw 4.0 and a 4.7 about fifteen minutes apart on Wednesday afternoon which caused some raised eyebrows and the odd cry of alarm around work, and a rude awakening on Friday morning with an Mw 4.9 at 03:30 which went on for maybe ten seconds. Earlier this evening, while we were sitting down to dinner,![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rustica observed kitchen objects shaking; it was a 4.4, which I strangely failed to notice. (I say strangely, because that's well into the region where it wakes me; usually they're pretty hard to miss!)
The local press is full of retrospectives on the quakes, their aftermath and the plans to rebuild the CBD. It's now known that it wasn't just one quake that started it off; the forensic seismologists believe there was a cascade of three quakes, and possibly a fourth. Then came the aftershocks, and ironically enough the Feb 22 quake - responsible for most of the death, damage and destruction - is considered to be one of them, with a smaller Mw but worse effects due to its epicentre. We were there. Not in the city itself, I grant you, but we spent the night near Chch and were roused several times by aftershocks.
Liquefaction in action There have been enquiries into the building collapses, and the NZ building code - already pretty strict, and undoubtedly the reason why the loss of life was relatively small - has been revised again. The land has suffered badly, with widespread areas of soil liquefaction. Power, water and sewerage to the eastern suburbs were famously described by the mayor as munted; they're still hard at work on the repairs. Swathes of land have been red-zoned - that is, effectively declared uninhabitable as the infrastructure will take years to put right - with residents facing eviction. Even where the land is alright, there are torrents of complaints about the sloth of the government compensation fund and some alleged questionable tactics of construction companies working on house repairs.
People are still leaving Christchurch. In the two months that I've been here, two colleagues have left the company (out of several hundred); both non-Kiwis, returning to their home countries, due broadly to the seismic situation.
You might well ask, what the Dickens are we doing here?
Those newspaper articles also tell another story, that of how the city and the region responded to the quakes. It seems we've done remarkably well. Apparently this is the worst series of quakes ever to hit a major Westernised city - and yet "only" 181 people died. It's a testament to the large amount of emergency planning in place. Sure, not everything went as well as it could have done as the emergency unfolded, but the majority did. A lot of the planning centres around the expected big one, the Alpine Fault, which is due to let go some time in the next 100 years. It'll be Mw 8 or so, though over 100km away; that's still going to be terrifying for us as Chch is expected to gently shake, rattle and roll for four or five minutes, though with relatively little damage here other than brown pants. At that point Chch will be the main base for that rescue and recovery effort. We will collectively be ready;rustica and I hope we will be able to play our part in some way.
Delegates from earthquake-prone regions around the world have come to learn how we've coped. To a certain extent we fear they'll be disappointed; it's all about the people. Kiwis just getting on with life and helping each other out - it's tremendously heartening, but I don't see it happening to the same extent even in (say) London. NZ is such a young country, there's a certain sense of pioneer spirit which continues to pervade; after all, the European population is mostly descended from settlers of 100-150 years ago. More recently, the population has been boosted by immigration, but selectively - the bureaucracy in the visa process (don't we know about it!) weeds out all but those prepared to make a strong commitment to NZ.
So right now, given that we've had a big sequence of shocks including a 1-in-2500-year event, and given all the planning and preparedness, Christchurch is one of the safest places in the world to be. The city may be damaged, but it is not broken. We are proud to be here, proud to be contributing to the economy, proud to feel that we are helping the city recover just by being here - and we hope to be able to really feel at home here in due course.
[*] ObPedant: not in recorded history, anyway
This week has seen an upsurge in activity, with a Mw 4.0 and a 4.7 about fifteen minutes apart on Wednesday afternoon which caused some raised eyebrows and the odd cry of alarm around work, and a rude awakening on Friday morning with an Mw 4.9 at 03:30 which went on for maybe ten seconds. Earlier this evening, while we were sitting down to dinner,
rustica observed kitchen objects shaking; it was a 4.4, which I strangely failed to notice. (I say strangely, because that's well into the region where it wakes me; usually they're pretty hard to miss!)The local press is full of retrospectives on the quakes, their aftermath and the plans to rebuild the CBD. It's now known that it wasn't just one quake that started it off; the forensic seismologists believe there was a cascade of three quakes, and possibly a fourth. Then came the aftershocks, and ironically enough the Feb 22 quake - responsible for most of the death, damage and destruction - is considered to be one of them, with a smaller Mw but worse effects due to its epicentre. We were there. Not in the city itself, I grant you, but we spent the night near Chch and were roused several times by aftershocks.
Liquefaction in action There have been enquiries into the building collapses, and the NZ building code - already pretty strict, and undoubtedly the reason why the loss of life was relatively small - has been revised again. The land has suffered badly, with widespread areas of soil liquefaction. Power, water and sewerage to the eastern suburbs were famously described by the mayor as munted; they're still hard at work on the repairs. Swathes of land have been red-zoned - that is, effectively declared uninhabitable as the infrastructure will take years to put right - with residents facing eviction. Even where the land is alright, there are torrents of complaints about the sloth of the government compensation fund and some alleged questionable tactics of construction companies working on house repairs.
People are still leaving Christchurch. In the two months that I've been here, two colleagues have left the company (out of several hundred); both non-Kiwis, returning to their home countries, due broadly to the seismic situation.
You might well ask, what the Dickens are we doing here?
Those newspaper articles also tell another story, that of how the city and the region responded to the quakes. It seems we've done remarkably well. Apparently this is the worst series of quakes ever to hit a major Westernised city - and yet "only" 181 people died. It's a testament to the large amount of emergency planning in place. Sure, not everything went as well as it could have done as the emergency unfolded, but the majority did. A lot of the planning centres around the expected big one, the Alpine Fault, which is due to let go some time in the next 100 years. It'll be Mw 8 or so, though over 100km away; that's still going to be terrifying for us as Chch is expected to gently shake, rattle and roll for four or five minutes, though with relatively little damage here other than brown pants. At that point Chch will be the main base for that rescue and recovery effort. We will collectively be ready;
rustica and I hope we will be able to play our part in some way.Delegates from earthquake-prone regions around the world have come to learn how we've coped. To a certain extent we fear they'll be disappointed; it's all about the people. Kiwis just getting on with life and helping each other out - it's tremendously heartening, but I don't see it happening to the same extent even in (say) London. NZ is such a young country, there's a certain sense of pioneer spirit which continues to pervade; after all, the European population is mostly descended from settlers of 100-150 years ago. More recently, the population has been boosted by immigration, but selectively - the bureaucracy in the visa process (don't we know about it!) weeds out all but those prepared to make a strong commitment to NZ.
So right now, given that we've had a big sequence of shocks including a 1-in-2500-year event, and given all the planning and preparedness, Christchurch is one of the safest places in the world to be. The city may be damaged, but it is not broken. We are proud to be here, proud to be contributing to the economy, proud to feel that we are helping the city recover just by being here - and we hope to be able to really feel at home here in due course.
chipper