Hard News: In the red zone
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One more: a house standing proud in a ravaged street. It must be so hard to leave this behind.
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Thanks for this. I live in my own bubble here in Chch, unaffected as much as these people have been while working and growing family help me … forget?
I went digging soon after and remember the people I’ve never met before (or since) doing a 360 degree turn of all their neighbours while pointing and saying “gone.. .gone… gone”. Retreat Rd was unfortunately a memorable one. Most of that’s gone now. -
Hebe,
Blossoms and the wreckage of picket-fence dreams: frigging weird. Friends are campaigning to get a food forest happening in the red zone and green frame.
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... whitebaiters ignoring the health warnings were almost the only people not in motion.
Arguably, they were in 'motions'...
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As if on cue, Suspicious fire engulfs red-zoned property (NZH).
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Couldn't someone at least create some great post-apocalyptic film there? At least then we can all get something from this sadness.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Arguably, they were in ‘motions’…
While there are your puns, Ian, there is hope.
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I've driven through the area a few times, to check out the home I lived in as a kiddie and to visit schools and a factory still operating in the area. It's a depressing jungle of shattered roads with detours on detours as the CCC tries to repair infrastructure, hardly surprising that locals don't choose to go rubber-necking.
Let's not forget those west of Hagley. While most houses in the north and west needed only minor repairs, I have several relatives and friends whose homes were totalled, particularly if they lived near the many streams and rivers that lace the suburbs. -
not to discount the obvious suffering behind these streets...wow an urban photographers dream and if it could be made safe a wonderful movie set!
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Evocative pictures, Russell. The one with the drift of leaves, particularly.
Isn't it creepy, the sometimes subtle cues that a place has been abandoned?I'm well away from the residential red zone, but quite a number of houses in my neighbourhood have been condemned. With some, fallen bricks make the situation obvious. Others look almost fine, at least from the outside, but they have that 100-years'-sleep feeling, as if the inhabitants one day forgot to come home, or forgot to wake up.
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Hebe, in reply to
as if the inhabitants one day forgot to come home
You've named that feeling Lilith. Clever.
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ChrisW, in reply to
Evocative pictures, Russell. The one with the drift of leaves, particularly.
Forced to leave
their home,
they left.
Present tense –
leaves enter
unbidden.
All that’s left,
not yet past. -
The red zone is at the end of my street. I seldom go there - it is too depressing. An film reel plays in my head - x lived here, my kids played with y there, that house had the cute dogs, that house there I coveted to live in and so on.
I do encourage the rest of Christchurch (and any visiting peeps) to go and have a look around though - you'll understand the tragic past better and may be get inspired about the possibilities for the future - parks, nature zones etc Something good has to come out of it all. -
Russell Brown, in reply to
The red zone is at the end of my street. I seldom go there – it is too depressing. An film reel plays in my head – x lived here, my kids played with y there, that house had the cute dogs, that house there I coveted to live in and so on.
I can understand that. I realised a diversion had taken me around the place where David and Jen's place used to be and thought about going back, but I figured it would make me sad looking at the empty space.
As I noted, most of my Christchurch friends don't go there either.
I do encourage the rest of Christchurch (and any visiting peeps) to go and have a look around though – you’ll understand the tragic past better and may be get inspired about the possibilities for the future – parks, nature zones etc Something good has to come out of it all.
I hope so. And I'm relieved that this post has been universally well-received. I didn't want to be Earthquake Tourism Guy from Auckland.
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And meanwhile, the Prime Minister apologises. Sorta:
Key apologised today, saying he was sorry if any offence was caused, but his comments needed to be taken in context.
"Look, that's the expression people use when there's a breakdown in things, so it's got to be seen in the context of that sort of situation," he said.
"But yeah, if people are offended by that, look, of course I'm sorry.
Got that? Its not his fault. It's just something people say. And who is people? Us. We should be jolly well ashamed of ourselves.
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Hebe, in reply to
And I’m relieved that this post has been universally well-received. I didn’t want to be Earthquake Tourism Guy from Auckland.
You weren’t. Someone must document it. You've done so sensitively but without sentiment. I haven’t the stomach for it, though as a life-long writer/journalist/politico I feel remiss about not doing so.
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This one seemed to suit monochrome.
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One occupied-and-vandalised house on Avonside Drive. Depressing.
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I was in Chch a couple of weeks ago, to do a talk at CPIT, and stayed at 1970s motel on Barbadoes. Walked many blocks around the area (St. Asaph's Street, Hereford Street, Chester Street etc), ostensibly to check out where some of the contestants in the 1935 Shirley Temple 'double' competition used to live (I have the street addresses).
It was a sad experience--empty section neighbouring an unoccupied house, then an occupied house, then another empty section,. Nature is re-colonising the emptiness but it does not compensate for missing people who may never return. The streets are disturbing but so are the blocks of abandoned small businesses. The only ones still operating seem to be car mechanics, It is difficult to see what will bring business back.
Walking around these streets at night, looking for a place to eat, is a libel experience,
Very difficult to orientate yourself if you have only memories of how things used to be, -
Hebe,
This is even more sickening than Key's comments. A large group of Port Hills property owners has been waiting for a decision on their land since God knows when. Gerry Brownlee says today he can’t tell them the decisions on the land due to yesterday’s Quake Outcasts decision.
He rubs salt in the wound by telling them he would have announced the hills decision today had it not been for the court case. So all the geotech info is in and weighed up, but he won’t say until the compensation package is set in stone by the courts.
So cruel for these people.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/9098095/Port-Hills-zoning-postponed-amid-appeal -
Russell Brown, in reply to
Gerry Brownlee says today he can’t tell them the dcisions on the land due to yesterday’s Quake Outcasts decision.
It starts to look like collective punishment.
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Got 2 minutes? The essential Quake Out-Casts' story by the supremely incisive Sarah Miles.
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Hebe, in reply to
It starts to look like collective punishment.
It certainly does. Only damaging to the govt if Aucklanders and Wellingtonians decide they cannot stomach behaviour that is so repugnant to natural justice.
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Hebe,
Meanwhile, pursuing my grumping, why is our city council – a dysfunctional lot who maintain zero public confidence – making massive decisions like whether to repair the Town Hall and building a new $89m central library, among others, in the dying days of an administration.
Surely that should be left to a council with a mandate: ie the next one.
Or is Bob Parker cooking up a tar baby or three for the next mayor and beyond? -
Ian Dalziel, in reply to
It starts to look like collective punishment.
...or some vile high-handed socio-psychological stress endurance experiment, nothing else fits Gerry's interminably cruel tease!
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