Posts by Hebe
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Up Front: Floodland, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
Sofie you have had four out of the five top life-stress events concurrently. What a serve. One foot in front of the other, and a comfortable bed to hide in is my current recipe. Hugs.
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Up Front: Floodland, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Thanks Ian; this house is sorted.
Isabel: if there's anything we can help with: let me know. Transport?
We're going to wade through the past today: the remaining task is sorting the 20 boxes of books that were stored in the garage and have been dumped inside. They are the best Greg and I have collected over our adult lives; the ones we wanted our kids to be able to read.
When the September quake happened we were about to put up shelving in three rooms right around above the head-height panelling and up to the ceiling as a space saver. Open bookshelves up high became less attractive during the aftershocks: belted with Berlin? Thumped by Thesiger? Pelted by Pilger?
Some casualties so far -- mostly the best of the fiction that I kept for when the boys were this age and up; all the NZ classics.I don't want in any way to minimise others' disasters, but it has been good to bin things I have a strong attachment to without looking back. On Friday Greg and I were by ourselves emptying the vile garage flood. We dealt with it in our Irish disputes resolution manner: a bellowing scrap. Building from a disagreement about the sorting sequence into a roaring swearing hurling: "I've always fucking hated this" Biff. "Why the fuck is this still here?" Hurl.
Three years of behaving well broke, and we had a good clean war for three or four hours, taking out all our anger and frustration about the way life has really been hard, the grief, the everything about living in this buggered city. Feels great; lighter.
Jane Bowron is going back to Welly: I'm envious, sort of: another wave of people is leaving now: #overit. -
Been doing a bit of neighbourhood de-gunging. Neighbour's two trailerloads to the dump (all the free skips are overflowing): $215. Thanks CCC. Not.
Wanker on a sit-up bike comes past: eight people working to fill the trailers -- sewage-infested mud through the pile of stinking soaked memories. "You can't throw those doors away: they are recycleable." Fortunately for prat with beard sitting on his 800-buck bike, beloved, property owner and I were working with a group of lovely young churchy people from the other side of town who had given up their Sunday afternoon. Or else we would have pushed him in the river while he lectured us.
I hear reports of a group of people around the river in Opawa who have lost everything: they have piled the lot up on the riverbank and set a bonfire. That's awful that they are so desperate and at the end of their tether.
I feel blessed, sad and angry. Blessed for the help and support given to us.
Angry at the spin-and-grin appearances of the PM who was able to spend 30 minutes on sweeping in front of cameras before he swanned off to a good-news presser.
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Another instalment on the flood risk/land changes etc. As Rob Stowell says, it's mind-bendingly complex.
A piece I read recently online said that in the due-out-this-month draft District Plan the 50-year-flood FMA had been changed to include the 200-year-flood transition zone.
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Up Front: Floodland, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Love Will Terrace Apart ....'Transylvania Waters'
Very clever! Siltia Waters?
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Up Front: Floodland, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
"Christchurch Is Pumping": class.
We could rebrand ourselves the Venice of the Southern Hemisphere.
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Up Front: Floodland, in reply to Isabel Hitchings,
Stilts on TC3 is a challenge, though could be done (expensively). One man in the St Martins valley near the foot of the Port Hills put down 17-metre piles (he paid for the extra) as part of his extensive repair.
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Up Front: Floodland, in reply to ,
Entirely possible.The question is: who pays? EQC says not; insurers say not. Even though the changes in the land are directly as a result of the earthquake, no entity will take responsibility. Despite full insurance -- for land and for house.
If the problem is too big, no-one will own it, and that's the awful, unjust and hideous reality.
The rest of NZ should be concerned: this is a precedent-setting situation that will be applied to every homeowner's land insurance. It effectively renders land insurance near non-existent and building insurance full of get-outs.
Banks will now start to lobby I would imagine: people will walk away from their properties.
Resolving this must be a primary election issue. Fuck resilience. -
Up Front: Floodland, in reply to Bronwyn Hayward,
It will take new thinking, and a new kind of social contract, or plan between NZ government and citizens, rethinking our mutual obligations & needs
Yes!
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Up Front: Floodland, in reply to Ross Mason,
Please don’t try New Orleans flood protection around Chch.
It's happening now.