Christchurch, September 4 2010 and Februar 21 2011 – Earthquakes are nothing new to New Zealand but they always come out of the blue and creap into the bones. In seconds – minutes a a city, a home of many was changed for ever.
Also Europe was observing carefully at the time and people are still aware of it today. We saw pictures of broken houses, were shoked and asked our friends how they were. The earthquake though was 4 and 5 years ago, life must have gone on and today is today. What is today in Christchurch? Probably building activity and lots of new houses everywhere, a new face to the city…
Christchurch today is a city of the orange roadwork cones, cranes, barren properties. Living in Christchurch means traveling on incredably uneaven surfaced roads, 4weeks changing detours and road closures. Whole suburbs became baned, the houses demolished and removed. The ground is overgrown and only driveways, some flowers remind of the former homes. Pips, cabels need to be renewed all over the city, because the movment of the earth has deformed, shifted, broken, created holes and gaps. The destruction becomes most obvious in the inner city. Here used to be a complex mixture of buildings of all sorts of architecture, lively with businesses, shops and people. Now every second house seems missing. The ruins have been removed leaving gravel places with weeds, lots of carparks. Some Buildings are still waiting to be torn down, other high buildings still wait for the decision if they will be kept or rebuilt lower as the new hight is limited to 5-7 levels.
Suddenly you find a new cafe, the new art gallery, a new shopping centre. Everywhere big steel constructions, the scelettons of the new buildings are rising out of the ground. The « big » guys have bought everything from the «little» guys to rebuild in a common concept allowing them to become even bigger. This leaves an ambiguous feeling.
Everywhere in the city you find people searching the old and the new. Locals are looking for memories and still stand shocked in front of the huge hole the has torn the Cathedral. Others find ways to found new businesses… Visitors are speachless as they find much waster damage as expected after seeing the pictures at the knews. And the 185 white chairs opposite the temporary «cardboard» Cathedral in memory oft he people who had lost their lives, they had hardly been noticed outside the city.
The earthquake has not allowed daily life yet, is not yet digested. But there is a place, where different people can come together for a drink, to talk, to shop, to make music. We almost misse dit, until we happend to walk into the Re:Start, a friendly mall made out of colourful containers. Here people can sit together creat new ideas, new life.
We can only whish the people of Chirstchurch the courage not to give up and to take the chance of a new beginning. And that insurances, regulations and the «big» guys don´t get too much influance.
And I guess we cannot forget that we are only visitors on this earth.