Christchurch. What to
say. It kind of sounds weird, even after
having been here, to not say “Cathedral” after “Christchurch”. I do not know. That is just my opinion.
Anyways.
Christchurch is a city in waiting. Waiting to be demolished. In the past two years (since about September 2010),
New Zealand’s second largest city has had six earthquakes, the worse (scale-wise)
was the original one in September 2010, but the most disastrous was the one on
22 February 2011. But without the first earthquake, the one on
11.2.11 wouldn’t have been so disastrous.
Along with the six earthquakes, there have been about 2000
aftershocks, which equates to about three per day for the past two years. We were told that it’s been calm for a few
weeks now (hopefully it’ll remain like this for a long time to come!), so I
haven’t felt anything to do with earthquakes, although I haven’t even been here
a day yet. But I’m hoping to remain
earthquake/aftershock free, hehe. ;P
They recently started demolishing Christchurch Cathedral,
but the demolition has been put on hold due to a petition to save the destroyed
structure. I got to see it today (I have
pictures, so you can see what it looks like, too), and WOW, the pictures on TV
and the Internet don’t do the city justice.
I mean, sure, they show the destruction caused, but you don’t really get
the whole idea just from that. See how destroyed
the city still is almost two years later, it’s incredible.
I was walking around the area of the Central City most
destroyed today (they have everything blocked off really well…all the fence
hire companies around the city must be doing really well! Haha), and you see
spray-painted markings, saying “CLEAR” and then a date, showing just how long
it’s been since most of the buildings have been touched. And to think, the Central City wasn’t quite
where the earthquake hit! But that’s
where the damage is most noticeable, I think, mostly due to how a CBD SHOULD
look in the middle of a day, holiday (which today was) or not.
While on the tour, we were able to see a house of our guide’s
friend which was destroyed due to the earthquake sending boulders into the air
and into the house, one into the kitchen (where his wife had been minutes before),
the other in the bedroom. We weren’t
actually supposed to be in there, but it was incredible to see. He (the friend) told us that, about some
brick that had been moved into a pile, it hadn’t been all the earthquake that
caused the destruction of his home, but also the aftershocks.
I’ve been in shows like Supernatural where a clock stops
when something bad happens, but I’ve never actually seen anything like that
happen before. Until now. We saw two clocks while on the tour that had
stopped working at 9 minutes to one, the time of the twenty second earthquake. One was really near the epicenter, the other
near here, on Victoria St, which commemorated Queen Victoria (? I think…)’s
Diamond Jubilee.
In two places in the city, I saw memorials for the people
who died in the quake, on at the site of St Luke’s, where they had used stones
from the demolished building, 185 of pieces, one for each of the victims, for
the display. Another, on the south end
of the city centre, used chairs, any and every kind, painted white. It was inspired by a few pieces of art that
use the empty chair to symbolise the person who is missing because they have
died, or something (I have a picture of what it means, as they had information
up at the site). Oh, and it was on a
patch of green grass, a square of 185m2, or something like that, to symbolise
new growth and a new start.
Which reminds me. I
stumbled upon a mall today. It’s called
RE:Start, and the stores there are made out of storage containers. It’s about restarting after the earthquakes
and it’s a way of starting up again in the midst of the destruction all around
the mall, as it’s right in the heart of the city, just down from Remembrance Bridge,
which I just love.
The roads and the footpaths are all in a chaos of bumps and
broken pavement. The streets are in a
constant state of rebuilding. People are
living on the streets, unable to find a place to live after their homes have
been deemed unsafe. And yet, even with
the grotesque sight of rubble and a broken city, the city is still incredibly
beautiful. There are so many amazing
things happening throughout the city that are incredible. (They’re going to build a cardboard church
that’s supposed to last for about five years until they’re able to build the
real deal. And don’t get me wrong,
cardboard sounds like a crazy idea where they’ve had lots of snow (to their
standards) for the past two years (OUCH!), and it’s not exactly the driest
area, I’d assume, with how green everything is, but it’s a really cool idea.)
I hear from someone before I left Australia who had been
here to Christchurch, saying that the city was still as it was almost two years
ago. They seemed cynical about it, like
the city was just supposed to have completely rebuilt itself. And, while yes, the city has been away from
the headlines (thank goodness) for a long time, and yes, I didn’t really know
what to expect of the city before I came, just that I knew I wanted to see the
city I had heard so much about (it’s sad to think that an earthquake put it on
the map for me, but it did). And after
hearing about all the earthquakes they had, and now it wasn’t just one or two,
but six, and how they’ve also had to deal with about 2000 aftershocks in the
aftermath, it’s amazing that they’ve even got as much done as they have. They’re reopening the city as quickly as they
possibly can and it’s incredible to see that happening.
I think everyone kind of just assumes that since New Zealand
is a first-world country, well able to handle themselves in most parts, that
they forget that when natural disasters happen, everyone needs help, not just
those who were poor to begin with. A
city, no matter what, can’t just pick itself back up after something like this.
Anyways, they’re doing really well with what they have.
And that’s just the first day of my holiday in New Zealand.
Did you notice all the random facts that I threw in where I
could? ;) heheh.
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