Air NZ offers free seats for councillors

SAM SACHDEVA

Last updated 05:00 06/05/2011

 

Air New Zealand will pay for an earthquake fact-finding trip to San Francisco by Christchurch City councillors and is offering them a free trip to Melbourne.

The council said yesterday that the airline had provided free flights to San Francisco for councillors Aaron Keown, Ngaire Button, Jimmy Chen, Jamie Gough and Tim Carter.

The councillors will pay for their other expenses during the trip, while up to five members of the Canterbury Business Recovery Group will pay for their travel and expenses.

The delegation will be hosted by San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and will meet Art Agnos, who was mayor when the devastating 1989 quake hit the city.

Councillors will also speak to experts in urban design, public transport, housing reconstruction, business-confidence and tourism recovery, building code and building resilience, liquefaction, private sector partnerships and governance.

An Air New Zealand spokesman said the airline had supported several initiatives related to the Christchurch quake, and councillors would be able to see how San Francisco had recovered from its quake.

The airline had also offered four councillors a free trip to Melbourne to study urban regeneration, although the timing of any trip had yet to be confirmed.

Most councillors who spoke to The Press yesterday ruled themselves out of the Melbourne trip, with only one expressing interest.

Banks Peninsula councillor Claudia Reid said the idea of studying urban regeneration was "certainly an idea I'm interested in exploring".

Reid said she would develop an itinerary and "explore avenues of study" before making a decision on whether to take part.

Sally Buck, Barry Corbett, Sue Wells, Chrissie Williams, Glenn Livingstone and Yani Johanson said they were unlikely to take part, while Helen Broughton could not be reached for comment.

Temporary Christchurch village due to open soon

JOHN HARTEVELT

Last updated 05:00 07/05/2011

 

The first temporary village in post-quake Christchurch will be open within weeks, as new figures show that at least 1120 Christchurch households have been asking for a temporary home for almost a month.

Local Labour MPs have called for a rethink of the temporary villages after only one of 350 short-term campervans provided for residents was used, but a paper on the social impact of the villages will be considered by Cabinet ministers on Monday.

Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee said, "When you're thinking about these issues, you always try to pitch it somewhere towards the most extreme end of it need-wise and then you work backwards from there.

"Trying to pre-empt what people will do and what choices they will make is difficult, all we've got to try and do is make sure that there are options."

Late last month, the Government said 40 temporary homes would be built at Linwood Park, in Christchurch's eastern suburbs. The village of two-, three- and four-bedroom homes would be in two circles with a looped road running between them.

Mr Brownlee said the village was due to open in about two weeks.

The Earthquake Commission had identified 12,000 homes with damage exceeding the $100,000 cap on claims and 7000 homes "up towards" the $100,000 cap.

A "significant number" of that total would be demolished, Mr Brownlee said.

There would be a "quite orderly" flow of homeowners through temporary accommodation, with most only out of their homes for six to eight weeks of repairs.

Labour MP for Port Hills, Ruth Dyson, said Mr Brownlee should reconsider the temporary villages.

"We don't want a repeat of the situation with the campervans, particularly given that the temporary houses are going to be taking up valuable recreation grounds," she said.

Disaster waste 'bottlenecks' a problem

DAVID WILLIAMS

Last updated 05:00 07/05/2011

 

Recycling all debris after a disaster can be costly and disruptive, a University of Canterbury researcher says.

A team of researchers, led by PhD student Charlotte Brown, reviewed waste-management responses from nine past disasters, including Hurricane Katrina in the United States in 2005 and last year's Haiti earthquake.

Their results appeared in the international journal Waste Management on February 21 – a day before Christchurch's devastating 6.3 magnitude earthquake, which she estimated produced about 20 years' worth of solid waste, or about four million tonnes.

Brown said the most important lesson from other disasters was about "bottlenecks" in dealing with waste.

Because of strict environmental legislation in Italy, 15 months after the April 2009 earthquake in L'Aquila less than 100,000 tonnes of an estimated 3 million to 4 million tonnes of debris had been cleared, sparking public protests.

"It is a real balancing act," Brown said. "You want to minimise environmental impacts, minimise cost ... and minimise social disruption – goals which are not always complementary."

Choosing 100 per cent recycling would be great for the environment, but cost more and take a lot longer, she said.

"If an expedient recovery is desired then some compromises to `peacetime' processes may be necessary. The desirable balance will be different for different communities responding to different disasters."

Another research team member, civil engineering and natural processes associate professor Mark Milke, said that poor public communication was an "unfortunately common" feature of disaster waste-management responses. Neither Brown nor Milke felt able to comment on waste-management in Christchurch after the quakes.

Brown said the aim of her research was to develop international guidelines on disaster waste management.

Rubble from the ruins stacked 25m high

DAVID WILLIAMS

Last updated 05:00 07/05/2011

 

A mountain of rubble is rising from the ruins of Christchurch at a makeshift landfill in the east of the city.

The Burwood resource recovery park in Bottle Lake Forest Park has about 100,000 tonnes of rubble in stacks up to 25 metres high from the wreckage caused by the deadly February 22 earthquake.

Initial estimates were that 4.25 million tonnes of rubble and 380,000 tonnes of silt would be recycled at the site, which was set up by the city council in March.

Civil Defence last month revised the estimates to 8 million tonnes of rubble and 500,000 tonnes of silt and sand.

EcoCentral, owned by the council's investment arm, is one of three joint-venture partners operating at Burwood.

General manager Robert Gerrie said 100,000 tonnes of rubble was already there, although the amount of material arriving had slowed since the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (Cera) took over the cleanup from Civil Defence.

The park covers one-eighth of the 845-hectare Bottle Lake Forest.

"It's wholly designed to recycle it; to put the aggregate [broken-up concrete for construction], steel and glass and bits and pieces back into the Canterbury region as a recycled product," Gerrie said. "I imagine there's going to be quite a bit of aggregate reused when we start rebuilding."

It is thought it may take five or six years to recycle and sort all of the material being stored at the site.

Civil Defence director of planning and transition Baden Ewart said 2 million tonnes would come from inner-city deconstruction and demolition, 2 million tonnes from residential and suburban commercial areas and 4 million tonnes from repairs to roads and water and sewerage pipes. The target is to recycle 65 per cent of residential waste and 85 per cent of commercial waste.

Canterbury Waste Services general manager Martin Pinkham said the volume of waste being taken to its Kate Valley landfill was dropping.

Waste volumes spiked in September at 34,275 tonnes and in March at 35,597 tonnes. The other eight months of the financial year averaged 19,415 tonnes.

- The Press

 

Quake's impact on wellbeing studied

JO MCKENZIE-MCLEAN

Last updated 05:00 07/05/2011

 

Female tertiary students ate more and cried more than their male counterparts after the February earthquake, a Lincoln University study shows

The study questioned 684 students from the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology (CPIT) and Canterbury and Lincoln universities six weeks after the quake.

They were asked about the effects on their studies, finances, shopping behaviour, sleep patterns, diet and anxiety levels.

All three institutions have had disruptions to teaching.

Study author Associate Professor Charles Lamb, of Lincoln University, said there was a distinct difference between how men and women's health and wellbeing were affected by the quake.

More women reported problems with concentration and anxiety levels.

They were more overwhelmed by daily activities and more tearful and nervous after the quake.

Women reported that they were eating more after the quake.

"It's interesting to have statistical validation that it's actually happening," Lamb said.

Job availability and fear of further quakes would drive a quarter of tertiary students out of Christchurch, the study showed.

Twenty-five per cent of students indicated they would be unlikely to stay in Christchurch when they had completed their studies, while 8.5 per cent were uncertain of their plans. The availability of jobs (57 per cent) and fear of further quakes (22.8 per cent) were the main reasons for planning to leave, the study found.

Lamb said students saw a city that had been demolished and a social life in ruins, so why stay?

Tertiary institutions should be worried, given the number of students who had already left and might not return, he said.

There were "small lights of enthusiasm", with 6 per cent of students thinking the earthquake would create more work during the rebuild, Lamb said.

THE STUDY FOUND

28.9 per cent of students questioned drank more alcohol after the February earthquake.

22.5 per cent suffered some form of financial hardship.

25 per cent plan to leave Christchurch after their studies are completed.

33.9 per cent are storing food in case of aftershocks.

46 per cent suffered disturbed sleep patterns.

67 per cent had their social lives affected.

- The Press

I'll be back, says Town Crier

Something to shout about

I'll be back, says Town Crier

MARC GREENHILL

Last updated 05:00 07/05/2011

Christchurch's Town Crier has had little to shout about since the February earthquake.

Stephen Symons has been a fixture in the central city since the position was created in 1989, but the cordons and lack of tourists have left him "washed up".

"A town crier needs a town to cry in," he said. "Not having had a town since February 22, that's left me a bit washed up."

Symons has not relinquished the position and said he was in "constant contact" with his employer, the Christchurch City Council.

The lack of tourists meant his role was not required, he said.

"With all the furore, I'd only get in the way," he said. "When the need arises, the Town Crier shall return."

Symons was in Cathedral Square on February 22, but has not been back since. The scene left him "stunned". "I saw the [Christ Church] Cathedral come down. That was something that will be with me for a very long time," he said.

"Everything I knew and loved is pretty much a heap of rubble."

On the day, Symons found his wife, who worked at the now red-stickered Community House in Hereford St, and walked home through the "rubble and shouting". Their home was inside the red zone for four weeks.

"For the first month, we were under curfew and we had a tank outside our front door. I had to show my passport just to walk down the road to go to the pub," he said.

Finding another area in Christchurch to resume his work was not an option, Symons said.

"It's got to be the central city, but we're working on it," he said. "Nothing's going to happen anytime soon."

Father plays part for son killed by rubble

KEITH LYNCH

Last updated 05:00 06/05/2011

 

Robert Gilbert just wanted to do his son proud.

His son, Jaime Gilbert, 22, was meant to play Laertes on the opening night of the Repertory Theatre production of Hamlet at Burnside High School's Aurora Centre last night.

But Jaime, a father of two, died when he was hit by rubble outside the Iconic Bar in Manchester St during the February 22 earthquake.

His sister, Amy Cooney, who was also in the bar and injured by the falling facade, reached for her brother's hand as he died.

Robert Gilbert knew his son would want the show to go on and three days after Jaime's funeral he spoke to the Repertory Theatre's artistic director about taking on the part.

"It wasn't like a eureka moment," Gilbert said.

"I just knew in my heart he would want the show to go on if at all possible as long as people weren't going through undue hardship. He was a theatre kid."

Gilbert spoke to The Press moments before going on to the stage last night.

"I'm nervous because I want to do my son proud.

"I feel quite a weight of responsibility filling his shoes.

"I feel he's a better actor than I'll ever be."

He said some of the cast had lost their homes in the February quake, and another cast member had lost a family member.

"We're finally here and we've been through quite a lot. It's been quite a ride," Gilbert said.

"We're all very conscious our city is in ruins, and it means a lot to see this through to fruition."

Jaime Gilbert had been rehearsing his lines with his father.

"He loved it," Robert Gilbert said.

"He was right on top of his role.

He expected an emotional night but hoped to hold back the tears until after the show.

"I don't think [I'll be emotional] when I'm acting, but maybe afterwards."

After the September 4 quake, the play's original home, the Repertory Theatre in Kilmore St, was closed, so rehearsals were moved to Tony's Tyre Service in Armagh St.

The cast was forced to move again after the February quake.

Hamlet opened to a sellout audience last night. It is on tonight at 7.30pm and tomorrow at 2pm and 7.30pm.