Just over a year on & where too now?

Kia Ora,

Been a while since sorting out plans for the future. Thanks to the kind comments on the last blog as well.

They contrasted favourably with the abusive comment from someone claiming to be a CBD business owner on a previous post, which will not be published as they will not put their name to it.

It also showed why they are small minded, don't have a clue what they are talking about when it comes to security, & the reason it makes my decision for the future easy.

When a current commitment finishes & issues have been sorted with my former corrupt, incompetent accountant(why are all the real criminals I deal with accountants?) then like many others I will be leaving Christchurch. Many others want too but are unable too due to poor leadership.

Why am I leaving? It is certainly not the Earthquakes. In fact the most likely option I will take will have me virtually living on the Alpine Fault.

I suspect talking to people that the reasons I am leaving are pretty much the same as most others now.

Again lack of leadership from the New Zealand Government, CERA, the Council, many business groups with people like the CBD business owner who are living in a world of make believe.

It was quite obvious almost immediately to anyone who has lived on the land & to the majority of residents that the land in the East of Christchurch is pretty much munted. There was a reason why much of it was green belt(probably too because of likely liquifaction in those areas in the earthquakes on 1868, 1870) in former times until developers convinced someone it was OK to build on. Its not!

For many of those people its the uncertainty. Initially many did not want to be Red zoned, now most do. You get the Insurance companies come in & say well this house is a goner.

Many are now saying its the insurance companies that actually have the realistic view. Because you then have EQC come in & agree, pay over $100,000 then later say after a review say no its only needs $39,000 worth of repairs as in one case(you are starting to hear a lot more).

Problem there is thinking their property is a goner, get the payment from EQC with the forthcoming payment from the insurance company they look to the future, sign up to a new property & Wham!. Suddenly the Insurance company doesn't have to pay & these people are left with probably a mortgage on the first one still to pay off & now a second property & not enough funds. Not to mention the fact they may have to pay a large part of the payout back.

Those in the Blue/green zones could not know what is going to happen for another two years(some quotes are talking already $250,000 just for foundations for some properties in these zones).

A woman with a blue/green property the other day said to me that she just was hoping there was another real big earthquake so then they could have their property written off & get on with things. Probably leave.

Not only do they not know but the decisions have to be good ones. There was a quote the other day not sure who by but it was a good one & that was the sum of the knowledge of the community outweighs that of the experts or something to that effect.

Then we get to the CBD.

First we have the Historic places people. There is nothing Historic in Christchurch except if you uncover the old Kainga (village) used by Waitaha & Kati Mamoe but not Ngai Tahu or the urupa(burial ground) that was built over by the early settlers. Nothing else is old enough.

In fact the absence of a Ngai Tahu presence should of sent a message. It is easy to work out. Having been part of Civil Defence for a short time they always looked at two scenarios as worst case. A Tsaunami in particular one caused by a mudslide into the Pegasus end of the Kaikoura Trench & an earthquake of 8 or more on the Alpine Fault.

That earthquake would cause liquifaction in the areas identified in a Map overlay which coincide with what has happened. The last 8 on the Alpine Fault was about 1717 we are told & that was likely to have caused any kainga to move. But of course they were only Maori & no European of the time was going to listen to Natives.

There seems to be no lessons learnt. Like now we hear all the time in particular from the historic people that this was rebuilt in this or that country after a war or an earthquake. Yet they all seem to forget that right from the start that the amount of liquifaction was well in excess of what had been experienced in any built up area to this time. Suppose everyone else is just not stupid enough to do it.

Much of what they quote though is on good hard ground. They also forget the 'black maps' which chart the early creeks in the CBD. It is easy to track the Black maps as the worst destruction on February 22nd 2011 appears to have occurred right where those creeks ran(& they are already rebuilding buildings on top of them).

Then there are the developers. There was one shown in a documentary saying how they wanted to bring down a building for safety after the September 4th 2010 earthquake. Agreed totally, but maybe they weren't being totally honest.

Recently that same developer was in the media complaining that the requirements engineers were putting on rebuilds in the CBD.

Having worked alongside structural engineers over the last year, the majority I would trust & have had too on their assessments of properties when entering them.

There is also at least one company I would not trust with a house of cards.

One of his gripes is that the ground when they were digging in was so hard. But the drillers testing the ground in the CBD have allegedly said that. In many places in or around the CBD there is a hard cap of land on top then sand down to in places 30 metres underneath.

It also flies in the face of the new buildings that also didn't stand up to the shakes. There was the reported build of a new property to double earthquake standards post the September shake that was just finished prior to the FEbruary shake. It had to be pulled down after the February earthquake.

More recently, as people do working in the CBD, was talking to someone else who has completed a lot of work in there. They were saying a second newly(post the initial lare quakes) built commercial buildng had had to be pulled down.

One problem I have raised on Facebook with people is the fact that you are not supposed to drive piles into ground subject to liquifaction. Someone raised the point that though that was right they now can use the slow drill type pile driver.

Actually seen one of them but when you think about it though not as energtic as normal pile drivers they would still be putting the pressure on the soil.

However when in there all you hear is the pile driving type. Comments from CTV building survivors reflected on how pile driving had appeared to rock the building prior to the quakes & in particular it seems prior to the February shake.

All you have to do is try & find the Hotel New World incident(if the Singapore Government hasn't totally supressed it as they try to of any negative comment on the country).

The reason given for its collapse at the time was pile driving into liquifiable soils. When asked how many piles it would take to cause issues with the building next door. The Kiwi engineer in charge of the rescue effort replied to a reporter. "One". How many had been driven in? Forty!

It just defies common sense to actually even think of rebuilding in the CBD.

As one structural engineeer pointed out, the earthquake on the 22nd February 2011 was not what buildings were built to withstand. In his words Christchurch CBD was 10 seconds from total collapse. Forget the shortcuts taken though they did weaken buildings. They just weren't built to take the power of that shake as the ground speed was well above anything recorded.

Which brings me to the next point. When working security I wear body armour, when cycling I wear a cycle helmet. When either of those does the job for which it is designed I throw them away & get a new one.

So when it was said that the building codes are only there to protect lives not buildings to me it meant the same thing. An engineer the other day admitted they are now looking at that for the future.

Not only would it work out probably cheaper for a rebuild but safer.

How many people are actually going to go back into a rebuilt Christchurch CBD?

I don't mind working in there as a safety officer or security or even labouring. I know the risks & are ever mindful of the possibility of another big one(most people in Christchurch expect another big one now).

But what about the rebuilt or fixed buildings?

Too easy to become complacent & forget. Though initially they could have real problems just getting people in there.

As one business said as quoted in the "Press" I thnk it was, that when they reopened in their undamaged building on the edge of the CBD 3 months after the February shake, they just had to shift as clients would come in look at the CBD & burst into tears.

You notice it even now with buildings that appear not to be set for demoliton at present in the outer CBD with notices saying tenants had moved, yet no one is trying to set up in those buildings.

Yet despite all that & the general publics feeling in I would say the majority of cases even today you hear how they are going to rebuild certain buildings in the same place.

Then as someone said the other day. "would you go to AMI rebuilt or fixed in the same place after been through those quakes? I know I wouldn't". No one disagreed with him.

Then you have the response to another deadly earthquake.

As I said earlier I had being part of Civil Defence for a short time a few years ago. Whilst unusally for an organization it is very good at the top with its permanent staff, it is the volunteers & in Christchurch now the burearucrats of the City council that are the problem.

In fact that was an issue during the September Earthquake with the council trying to bring in some new system resulting in one welfare centre it taking a day & a half apparently to just sort out the seating around a table.

I left after a short time as a volunteer because of the unrealistic way they viewed disasters. The comment was "we won't need help we will save them all" by one group of senior volunteers. They were the ones short cutting the system(which is Ok as long as you tell someone you have done it).

Funny I heard that comment repeated on February the 22nd as upset would be rescuers came to us on the cordons.

People claim though that this was so big no one was ready. That is not right or shouldn't be as Civil Defence have always been aware of what would happen in Christchurch if an 8 or greater on the Alpine Fault hit. In one scenario they said the city would be flattened.

Other issues are how much of the work that is around is not going to those of us in Christchurch.

Its all going to people from overseas or out of town. Many who are upseting the locals treating the place as just a party, others are spending as much time on drugs as passed to me by some jn certain areas of security(though dissatifaction with police responses means it is not been passed to them), but also apparently a snap drug test on one out of town work group over half were positive(17/32).

There is not the work they are claiming either. Because I keep my options open with busnesses having a full time job is not something I can do. So have for years signed up to a number of agencies for Temp work. When there is a lot of work around you are getting offers all over the place. At times 3-5 jobs a day.

At present you hardly get work at all. Agenices actually have been saying they are tending to build lists in preparation for when the work does start.

Yet from a business perspective temp labourers are the best option particularly in Christchurch at present with so much up in the air.

There are a lot more people leaving than the Government claims that is clear. So many items been given away on Freecycle from certain areas, or offers on Trademe with comments "must sell & be settled by this date as leaving the country the next day".

It would appear, & heard someone say it the other day though in slightly different words, the NZ Government CERA & Christchurch City council are trying to destroy Christchurch as an entity.

That they have no real interest in what the people think has shown in the city plan so far.

The City council asked for input from the citizens, yet despite producing something that appeared to reflect many of those ideas, in recent weeks there have been plans showing from developers & corporations which totally go against those ideas.

Not to mention comments from business groups which fly in the face of those ideas.

Though it is not all doom & gloom. Despite the fact I planned my security business around the fact that there was a possibility of a major earthquake or Tsaunami(based on those overlays seen all those years ago), the whole aim was to once successful move into the country or I should say back into the country.

This has just hastened it & allows me to take a path to achieve one of the goals I have set myself. I had hoped it would be in place by now & it would of been very welcome by many in Christchurch over the last year.

An ex army mate told me a few years ago to get out of Christchurch as there was something not great about it. We had both worked in Iraq & my comments that it was more dangerous here than in Baghdad he agreed with as have many others.

Then the general reaction to that statement tended to show the lack of reality that now shows in the plans for the future of Christchurch.

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