Christchurch

The last time I stood in this spot was 10 years go before the earthquakes, on subsequent visits the city centre had still been cordoned off. Most of the damaged buildings have been pulled down and there are empty spaces or car parks in their place. Great swaths of residential areas have been red zoned and are now just wobbly roads and gardens that have all melted into one long fenceless garden, it all looks very inviting and meadow like but it can never be built on again. The financial effects of the earthquakes cost 20% of New Zealand's GPD, compared to 1% hurricane Katrina cost the United States.

 

This was an old stadium, ground is all bubbled now from the effects of liquefaction - the quakes liquefy what's under the ground, and liquid bubbles up through the ground and solidifies again. One of the big effects of the quakes was the lowering of large areas of land which in turn raised the water table, which makes flooding more likely as there is less drainage space for water to soak into.

 

 

This building was interesting because its not often you get a cross section of an actual building to see how it was made. I took this picture as a reference in case I need to build a big stone building, for example for Cuthbert when he becomes a saint.



I stayed with my relative Jane who lives up a hill and her house did not fall over, but her neighbours down the hill did and the one above the back of her garden became red stickered and is now abandoned. Jane is like a warm blanket, she made she feel totally at home straight away. Jane made me laugh a lot, especially her disparaging remarks about her own dogs because they're not really proper dogs and since they had their hair cut they are almost embarrassing. They are good dogs though. I enjoyed a lovely domestic evening with Jane and John watching some Bear Grylls reality show about women on an island who only had a week to go before they were rescued but still had no leader and spent most of the time bitching about each other and getting huffy as opposed to doing anything constructive, eventually the ones that wanted a leader elected some pro active doers who managed to turn the whole thing around in remarkable fashion.