On 4 September last year I posted A Reminder about the Christchurch earthquake of that day. Since then there have been over 8,000 - yes eight thousand - earthquakes large and small affecting the area. Fiona from Four Paws and Whiskers who has been one of my principal links (via her blog and Faceboook) with the traumas of Cantabrians during the last year today drew 2011 Back into the CBD Sept 05 - part 1 to our attention. The whole sequence of photos will give you an idea of the physical anguish of the City. It will not, of course, show you the huge loss of homes and all the mental anguish that goes with living on constantly moving ground.
Oddly enough for me one of the most emotional of the photos was of a large piece of equipment. It represents the final indignity for a building. When the building has been demolished the concrete is fed into this machine and spewed out the other end as foundation fill for the next building.
It must be awful but begs the question that, with such a relatively small population, why not build somewhere else?
ReplyDeleteIs that what does!!
ReplyDeletelearn something new everyday.
Have you seen this monster ?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/christchurch-earthquake-2011/5581897/Big-digger-for-Christchurch-demo
Adrian.. it is the second largets city here, prob only 300,000 people, but a lot to relocate and a massive loss of equity for people to walk away from too. Causing a few headaches working out where to move the red zoned homes as it is, let alone the whole city centre. Luckily, huge amounts of the area are not badly affected and we are all adapting to our new normal.
Never having seen the city I think it's hard to quite grasp the total damage just from those pictures. (Some of the videos and photos from the big quakes and shortly after I think gave me a better idea.) Adrian's comment made me think of our most northern town in Sweden, Kiruna, which is being moved because of mining related subsidence. (Just look up Kiruna in Wikipedia if you want to learn more.) But Kiruna has 'only' 18000 inhabitants or so... Can't quite be compared to 300000!
ReplyDeleteWow, it's hard to fathom that a whole year has passed since the big quake in Christchurch. Here in New England, we've recently had our first noticeable tremor in a very long time. It served as a sobering reminder that it can happen anywhere, at any time. It must be so incredibly anxiety provoking for the New Zealand folk to keep feeling the aftershocks. My heart goes out to all of them.
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