Post-quake life in the Christchurch suburbs

Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) organiser, activist and writer Murray Horton pens his personal impressions of life in the suburbs after the 22 February 2011 earthquake brought death and devastation to New Zealand’s second-largest city. Authorities have confirmed 147 people dead with 50 unaccounted for. This is an edited extract from an email to friends and fellow activists received by Café Pacific. Murray, his wife, Becky, and a nameless stray cat live in the inner suburb of Addington.

By Murray Horton

BECKY and I are alive and well. We're living (camping, more accurately) in our house. It has no structural damage, unlike so many others. But it has sustained more interior damage than was the case with the September 4 quake. For example, we have evacuated nearly everything out of our lounge in case the chimney decides to part company with the wall, as it has now got more noticeable cracks where it joins the wall and the fireplace surround itself is coming loose.

Unlike September, this one sent things flying in all directions and knocked everything off the walls, smashing a number of things; including the office’s Chairman Mao clock (is nothing sacred?). Surrounding streets had cracking, slumping, ground rising, liquefaction and flooding (I witnessed water and silt start pouring from the ground as a huge aftershock struck as I was walking across our little neighbourhood reserve) but we have never had that in our street or on our land.

We were without power from Tuesday until Saturday, so had no internet access, nor did we get to see any of the TV coverage. Having no power was a blessing in disguise. One of the first huge aftershocks on Tuesday swung several of our light fittings so violently they hit the ceiling and smashed, showering the floor with broken glass and leaving naked wires dangling from the ceiling. Believe it or not, I was able to get not one but two separate electricians to come to the house and render them safe before the power came back on. These weren’t mates, just regular sparkies I found in the phone book.

Water on ... but just a dribble
Water started to come back on Friday but it is only a feeble dribble (better than no dribble, however). It will be a while before we can have a shower or wash clothes. We never lost the phone (good old analogue landlines … our cordless phones, answerphone et al, went dead).

Because we use bottled gas for cooking, we never went hungry. We dug a toilet in the backyard, even rigged it up for shelter and privacy. And from Tuesday to Saturday we slept under the dining room table. Now we’ve moved back into our bedroom – as Becky said to me today, if we die, we die. Of course, things are far from back to normal – we have low flying helicopters passing over us from dawn until dusk (we’re not far from Hagley Park and Christchurch Hospital); soldiers and police from several countries are manning the CBD roadblocks and curfew just walking distance from our home.

To all of those friends who brought us water, let us use their houses for computer, internet, mobile phone charging, showers and toilets, Becky and I are eternally grateful. To all of you who rang and texted from around the country and around the world, many thanks for going to the trouble of getting hold of us (which was not easy).

I’ll just tell you one of my quake stories. I was in the Canterbury Television Building [a building that collapsed with an estimated 100 people inside] at 10.15 that morning for an interview about the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, the US/NZ Partnership Forum taking place in Christchurch that day, and the opposition to the TPPA being organised by the New Zealand Not For Sale Campaign. It was the first time I’d set foot in that building since 2008. We (me, the young reporter and the cameraman) did the interview in a first floor meeting room, then we sat around afterwards and chatted. I probably left the building between 10.45am and 11am. The young guy (Rhys Brookbanks), who had only just started at CTV, is among those believed killed in that building’s collapse. I was one of the last to see him alive, as it turns out.

I don’t know what happened to the Zimbabwean cameraman. From there I went to Kiwibank in the Bus Exchange Building in Colombo Street to do the CAFCA banking (because there was supposed to be a CAFCA meeting that night, in Lyttelton). I was at work, in front of this computer, when it all kicked off.

You don’t need me to tell you that this was an event of indescribable violence (and I only experienced what happened at our place, which was bad enough, but very mild compared to the catastrophe that happened in so many other parts of town). Tuesday night was just one continuous earthquake as wave after wave of aftershocks slammed into the house, some of them with the force of runaway trains. In between times the ground just continuously rumbled and shook. Neither of us got any sleep and I doubt that anybody else in Christchurch that night did as well.

Tens of thousands of people have fled the city. Our little street has been significantly depopulated. Everyone knows people who have left. One of our closest friends and colleagues is among them. Those staying put are under great stress in many cases.

Both CAFCA and ABC (Anti-Bases Campaign) are scheduled to meet this week (all committee members have sustained house damage ranging from moderate to serious to uninhabitable). I have every intention of getting out the next Watchdog but there are plenty of others involved in that process who may have more pressing priorities. So it might well be a smaller than usual
edition.

The Roger Award is on schedule (the event to name the winner is in Auckland, April 4). I have every intention of undertaking my North Island speaking tour in April (the first time I got access to electricity, at a friend’s house, I went back to work writing my speech). And I’m going to speak in Dunedin in May.

Murray Horton
Organiser
Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA)
Christchurch, Aotearoa/New Zealand

Pictures: Searching for survivors, CTV.CN; Murray Horton at the Pacific Media Centre in 2009.

• Christchchurch Press earthquake coverage
  
• Murray Horton's Auckland talk on "New Zealand NOT for sale"

Mediawatch special probes NZ quake coverage

BEHIND the stories of catastrophe ...

Radio New Zealand's Mediawatch has broadcast a gripping 44min special programme this weekend featuring news coverage of the Canterbury earthquake on February 22 - the second in Christchurch in five months.

The efforts were extraordinary - just like the survivors' tales of courage and compassion the journalists were telling.

The reporters, writers and editors who presented the pictures on the country's television screens, the interviews on radio and the words on the newspaper pages and websites told their own behind-the-scenes stories.

In spite of one editorial staff member being killed and four injured in the 6.3 magnitude earthquake, the Christchurch Press produced a special edition the nexr day and published right through the catastrophe - and still distributed the paper as well.

Editor Andrew Holden said there was no power, no television, no way to recharge cellphones and old media - radio with batteries and newspapers - kept local people informed.

"A bit of paper in your hand is very comforting at a time like this," he said.

Canterbury Television, the 20-year-old regional TV station, was devastated when the building collapsed with an estimated 100 media people, language school staff and students and visitors being trapped under the rubble.

Christchurch writer Trevor Agnew talked about the important and creative contribution of CTV to the region.

"It's terrible to be talking about the programme in the past tense but CTV, as we know it, has finished," he said. He hoped the programme would be redeveloped.

The Mediawatch programme was produced and presented by Colin Peacock and Jeremy Rose.

Image: Realtimer

• Listen to Radio NZ's Mediawatch podcast for February 27.
• Tale of two cities - Tripoli and NZ's quake town
• Humanity trumps selfishness in earthquake devastation
  

A tale of two cities – Tripoli and NZ's quake town

THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD captured the contrasting mood between two cities with poignancy, but almost accidentally. After three days of heavy black borders to mourn the loss of some 147 dead and a further 50 missing, the newspaper and other media across NZ told stories of courage, drama and devastation in the Christchurch earthquake.

A world away, and tucked deep on p. 17 in today’s Herald, the Libyan crisis raged on in Tripoli: “A city in the shadow of death.”

More than half the front broadsheet page of the Herald was devoted to the death of five-month-old Baxtor Gowland, a child of the last quake. Pictured clad in a scarlet Father Christmas outfit and cottonwool beard, Baxtor was born just two weeks after the 4 September 2010 quake. And now, tragically, he is a victim.

The inside front page told of “one street’s misery”, showing a fullpage graphic of Santa Maria Ave in the seaside suburb of Redcliffs: Reported Andrew Koubaridis:

In the minutes after Tuesday's devastating earthquake, the people of Santa Maria Ave, Redcliffs, gathered at the top of the street and hugged and cried.

Still in shock from the violent shaking, they scrambled from their shattered homes and sought comfort from one another - many will never be able to live in their homes again.

One side of the street has several homes cracked beyond repair. Others have been almost split in half and are now in danger of falling down on to a street below.

Another story reported how an Australian female urologist used tradesman’s tools – a hacksaw and a multipurpose knife – to amputate both legs of a quake victim lying trapped under a beam in a collapsed building. She saved the 52-year-old’s life.

Columnist Noelle McCarthy cited “the great poet of collapse, William Yeats, who wrote: “All is changed, changed utterly.” While noting that there is a scale to measure earthquakes, she asked how do you quantify their toll?:

In the aftermath of disaster, where to start? We start with each other. We take care of each other, we acknowledge this loss.

On Pacific Scoop, former Fiji Times editor Jale Moala, now a subeditor with the Christchurch Press, described the city as being “like a war zone” and a shock to Fiji migrants just used to cyclones and hurricanes.

Local Radio Apna and Suva’s Fijivillage.com were condemned by authorities for quoting an unnamed doctor saying eight Fiji Islanders had died in the earthquake. The authorities insisted this was false.

Meanwhile, from Tripoli in Libya, The Independent’s Robert Fisk reports in the Herald on gunfire, fear and rumour in the capital:

Up to 15,000 men, women and children besieged Tripoli's international airport last night, shouting and screaming for seats on the few airliners still prepared to fly to Muammar Gaddafi's rump state, paying Libyan police bribe after bribe to reach the ticket desks in a rain-soaked mob of hungry, desperate families. Many were trampled as Libyan security men savagely beat those who pushed their way to the front.

Among them were Gaddafi's fellow Arabs, thousands of them Egyptians, some of whom had been living at the airport for two days without food or sanitation. The place stank of faeces and urine and fear. Yet a 45-minute visit into the city for a new airline ticket to another destination is the only chance to see Gaddafi's capital if you are a "dog" of the international press.

There was little sign of opposition to the Great Leader. Squads of young men with Kalashnikov rifles stood on the side roads next to barricades of upturned chairs and wooden doors. But these were pro-Gaddafi vigilantes – a faint echo of the armed Egyptian "neighbourhood guard" I saw in Cairo a month ago – and had pinned photographs of their leader's infamous Green Book to their checkpoint signs.

There is little food in Tripoli, and over the city there fell a blanket of drab, sullen rain. It guttered onto an empty Green Square and down the Italianate streets of the old capital of Tripolitania.

But there were no tanks, no armoured personnel carriers, no soldiers, not a fighter plane in the air; just a few police and elderly men and women walking the pavements – a numbed populace.

Sadly for the West and for the people of the free city of Benghazi, Libya's capital appeared as quiet as any dictator would wish.

But this is an illusion.

Turkey is mounting the biggest evacuation operation in its history, with more than 25,000 Turks living in Libya fleeing. Twenty one other governments have asked Ankara for help getting their nationals out. A US-chartered 600-passenger ferry is leaving Tripoli for Malta and Israel has allowed 300 Palestinians from Libya to enter the occupied territories.

Petrol and food prices have trebled; towns outside Tripoli have been ripped apart by bitter fighting between Gaddafi supporters and opposition groups.

Loyalist forces patrol the capital’s streets, tanks guard the outskirts and the state radio station is heavily guarded.

This war zone is rapidly exploding.

• Christchurch recovery map
  
• New Zealand Herald earthquake coverage - photos, videos
• Christchurch quake: One street's misery
• Doctor uses hacksaw in amputation
• Pacific reactions to the Christchurch quake
• Tripoli: A city in shadow of death - Robert Fisk
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The Gizzy quake - a fresh reporter's news diary

It's always refreshing to hear from our AUT Uni journalism school scribes out there in the field. Take Jessica Wauchop for example, down there at the Gisborne Herald. Just received a breathless email from her after she was caught up in the story of her reporter's life so far - the Gizzy quake! A few lines from her message - she was caught in the middle of Xmas drinks:
Nothing like a huge earthquake to sober you up! It was 8.55 pm. It started really slowly, just rocking a bit and we expected it to finish soon like normal. All of sudden there was a huge jolt, then about 20 seconds worth of more severe jolts. The huge press machine was clanking and bottles were hitting the floor. For some reason we all ran outside to the carpark. Only one photographer jumped under the table, and I'm pretty sure I screamed.
The lights went out at some stage during all of this and it took a few seconds of shivering in the carpark to start thinking again. About half a minute later we all realised what had happened and thought "Shit! Stories! Go!"
The Gisborne Herald is right in the centre of town and across the road from the Warehouse. We ran there straight away. It was crazy, people were coming out of the store - some with cuts others just in shock. Warehouse items had fallen from all the shelves and we spoke to people who had had to jump under a over turned couch to avoid getting hit by things.
Then we heard someone say buildings were down in town. (It's about now that I start feeling like a real reporter).
Another reporter and two photographers and I hailed down a truck, jumped on the back of it and asked it to take us into town where the buildings were down. The first building we saw badly damaged was Hallenstein's; its roof had collapsed and staff and customers were coming out of the rubble. I stayed here with our chief photographer, we spoke to the staff and customers who all had to hide under the tables. We climbed through the rubble a bit to help the staff members and get photos and a look at what happened.
Next we headed down town and went to several other buildings that had their ceilings come down with the earthquake. It was surreal... Image: Scoop

Merry Christmas Jess - and to all our Cafe Pacific readers!

• Surgeons worked by torchlight - by Jessica Wauchop
• Gisborne Herald
• Contact Jessica
• Earthquake claims reach $6 million - NZ Herald