Earthquake Recovery

Well I"m back on Blogger since it appears that Greenpress disappeared off the face of the internet and my blog there went with it. Hi Ho!

I live in Christchurch, New Zealand where we experienced an earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter Scale. It disrupted life quite considerably and continues to do so for many people who suffered extensive damage to the houses and in some cases to their land.

What has been most interesting to me is the observation that while our Civil Defence guys and girls pretty much had things sorted in the immediate aftermath of the quake, the phase known as recovery has been much less smooth sailing.

Recovery is much longer term. People move from being grateful for being alive to being angry that life is not returning to normal as quickly as they had hoped. The aftershocks continue (we're still getting them 3 months on although they are much less frequent now than they have been). Social Services are bracing for a particularly bad Christmas from a domestic violence point of view because men particularly find it difficult to cope with the uncertainty and lack of "control" involved in the earthquake and it effects. streets remain closed, sewers remaing damaged because the amount of repair work is just massive and the limiting factor is equipment and manpower.

Insurance companies are reeling with the extra work, Councils are trying to make decisions quickly but they need to grapple with a lot of questions that needs input from scientists, engineers and so forth.

Despite all this some great things are happening. Community groups are taking things into their own hands. One of the most interesting things that has been the development of initiatives aimed at filling in the gaps left by demolished buildings. Check out Gapfiller and Greening the Rubble for examples. For most, this is to avoid the default turning of these areas into carparks which then contribute to traffic congestion and the development of an ugly and unattractive City.

May these kinds of community activity continue and from the rubble we may get a range of new intiatives and ways of living.