A Week in Town can be a Long Time

by Kennedy Graham

One week after the 7.1, and we are all facing challenges here in Christchurch.  To a strange extent these are shared and yet individually unique.

Above all there are those who have lost homes.  I know a few personally.  They shrug it off, avoiding self-pity.  They help others, even as they struggle to sort their own lives.  My Labour colleague, Brendon Burns, is one.

And there is the occasional drama. I speak with a young mother in Avonside.   She surveys her wooden cottage from the street.  Its sole brick wall has waltzed away from the rest of the house, closer my neighbour to thee.  It will require tender loving care – from engineers.

But the drama surrounds her 4-year old son.  He had clambered into a 1-metre deep culvert that had opened up after the ‘quake, with his tricycle.  The ground was still moving – the bike was ‘sand-blasted’ by moving sand, as he struggled to get out.  He succeeded, with help, and was now playing on the street, searching for further care-free life adventure.

Mostly the trauma is not the immediate housing – people are living with relatives or friends, or in temporary apartments, or in welfare centres.  The main trauma is the uncertainty – the longer-term prospect for re-building, or not, on their own properties; and their legal-financial futures.

There are those who are helping, but still feeling the stress.   I speak with a carpenter who is repairing a roof.  Precariously swaying on his ladder during each aftershock, he never has the time to nimbly alight onto what’s meant to be solid earth, so he just grips the guttering.  He freely admits to bursting into tears on two occasions, something he hasn’t done since childhood.  Yet he stays cheerful.

At a briefing for Christchurch MPs, Earthquake Minister Gerry Brownlee and Mayor Bob Parker speak of moving from emergency into recovery and on to reconstruction.  They give a sit-rep. on water, solid waste, buildings, roads, drainage, housing, schooling, welfare, counselling.  They speak of insurance and the equity issues arising from legal-financial complications over broken homes and terminal land.  Who pays for what?  How do you get Pareto optimality on communal recovery, Prime Minister?

But I must not be partisan. We are in this together and the Government and councils are doing a fine job.  Government legislation will be introduced into Parliament this week under Urgency, giving emergency powers to local authorities and other operators to avoid what they call ‘red tape’ in ‘fast-tracked’ reconstruction.  No doubt some of this will be necessary, but we must ensure that our reconstruction is not too hasty, and we take the opportunity to rebuild along sustainable lines.  I said as much in my statement to the House for the Greens.

The true heroes, I think, are the mid-level people – the engineering teams out on the streets, assessing, repairing, deciding the fate of structures.  Those manning the telephone banks and working computers in the civil defence headquarters.  Volunteering at the welfare centres – two friends whom I encounter at Addington.  The students whose social media instincts match their communal spirit and who volunteer into the field faster than the rest of us.  We are proud of you all – each of you deserves a medal.  Might Christchurch strike one?

I have been splitting my week between Wellington and Christchurch – early flights, intensive days, late nights.  But it has been an inspiring experience, to see Kiwis coping with real disaster.  We have survived a miracle. And we shall be stronger as a community, because of it.