Christchurch - a Munted* City

Three years ago, Christchurch was a busy place with lots of choice of things to do and places to eat. Today, it resembles a war zone. I expect everyone knows that the city was hit by a serious earthquake and most will have seen pictures of piles of rubble which were once buildings.

However, nothing prepared me for the reality. Vast swathes of the city centre are just cleared wasteland. There are still numerous condemned buildings awaiting the bulldozers. Many of the beautiful old buildings have simply vanished.

Last night, I went out to find something to eat and thought I might end up back in the hotel restaurant as street after street proved empty of life or even habitation.

This morning, daylight showed the extent of the destruction caused by the earthquake. This is the view from my hotel window:

When I was last here, I left about a month before a magnitude 7.1 quake struck the city at 04:35 on 4 September 2010. There was quite extensive damage though few buildings seemed irreparable. No-one died in the quake and the population took heart from that and began the process of repairing their city.

What nobody could know at the time was that, on 22 February 2011 at 12:51, the city would be struck again - this time by a magnitude 6.3 quake. Buildings already weakened by the September quake collapsed all around the city. This time, there would be 185 deaths, many in the building occupied by Canterbury Television, a modern concrete structure which collapsed like a pack of cards and subsequently caught fire. It would probably have been visible from my hotel room, three years ago.

The centre of Christchurch has long been its Anglican Cathedral. When I was last here, I cut off the top of its spire, but this was due to bad photography:

In 1888, the job had already been done in reality by a magnitude 7.3 earthquake. At that time, the top of the spire was replaced with a wooden replica, which is what I actually saw.

Now, not just the spire, but the entire tower and the west wall of the cathedral simply aren't there anymore.

It's hard to express the effect of this. It's only one building - one of hundreds - but the Cathedral, and the square in front of it, were very much the focal point of the city. This was where people gathered to celebrate civic events, or New Year, for example. I was lucky with my timing - a week or two ago, I wouldn't have got into Cathedral Square at all.

The Anglican diocese have made the decision to pull down what's left and replace the Cathedral entirely. There are still ongoing legal challenges to this, though permission has been granted, but, as you can see, the building is still there. It looks not too bad to the layman, but what is there is very weak indeed. What structural integrity it did have, it no longer has. A high wind could bring down parts of the roof, far less another serious quake.

The diocese, though, is very wary on the issue. They are, understandably, reluctant to take any risks with people's lives in their Cathedral, but they're also very aware that, once demolished, the Cathedral will never be there again. There are arguments on both sides - retain the old culture or embrace the new. Whatever they do, they'll upset people.

In the meantime have another look at the second of the views above. Towards the top-centre is what looks like a large tent. In fact, this is the transitional Cathedral, colloquially known as the Cardboard Cathedral since that is largely what it is made of. Here's a closer look:

Coincidentally, I happened to hear on the radio this morning that today was the first day that the new building was open to the public so I made a point of dropping by.

Cardboard? Yes:

Those "beams" are not wooden - they're gigantic, cardboard rolls. Think of what's inside your kitchen roll, only on a enormous scale. The cross on the far wall is two intersecting cardboard tubes.



As befits a church, there is a stained-glass window:

Having spent most of Sunday at 35,000 feet, it was nice to be able to join the first public service in the new Cathedral - a short celebration of the Eucharist.

I also found out that there was to be a series of concerts entitled Joyfully Un-munted. The first concert, called Out of the Red Zone - a reference to the sealed-off red zone that has only just disappeared from the city centre - was this evening. Of course, tickets sold out weeks ago, but I wandered by on the off-chance and had just been told that the last of the returns had just been sold when a lady arrived and announced that she had a spare ticket. And it was a great ticket - third row, three seats from the aisle.

The programme included music from Tchaikovsky, Chesnokov and Sibelius. It also included a piece for organ and choir entitled Laudes Organi by Kodały, and was performed by the Christchurch City Choir and the first outing of the new, digital, Rodgers organ - the only 4-manual organ they've ever built:

The choice of a digital organ was largely dictated by the space available, but I can tell you that it makes a very impressive sound. And my inherited ticket gave me a great view over the organist's left shoulder.

Meanwhile, back in Cathedral Square, there is little else to see. The red zone may not exist anymore, but that doesn't mean that there aren't still hundreds of individual buildings and sections of streets closed off with temporary fencing.

Facing the Cathedral, Worcester Street leads away to the west. It was a busy street lined with shops and cafés. Now, well, the street's still there, but that's about all you can say:

 Away in the distance, you can see the city's museum, which survived the earthquake largely unscathed.

Beside the Cathedral used to stand the rather stately Press building - the headquarters of the local paper:

(the photograph was taken from the no-longer-extant Cathedral tower). Now, the Press building is no more, leaving a lovely, uninterrupted view of the Novotel:

To be fair, it's better than the hotel I'm in which is right behind it - you can see it in the first picture. It had only just opened when I was last here and only re-opened recently. It suffered only cosmetic damage in the earthquake, but was in one of the last part of the red zone to be re-opened.

On the southern side of the square, the old post office which was doing duty as a Starbucks and tourist i-site appears to be largely intact, but it is closed off from access:

Again, the first picture was taken from the Cathedral Tower.

There were a number of statues in the square including this one of John Robert Godley, often credited with founding the city:

After a century or so out in the rain, Mr Godley is now having a lie down inside:

This picture was taken in the quite-excellent Quake City exhibition, a historical walk-through of the city's life in a very active earthquake zone. Much of it, as you might expect, concentrates on the February 2011 quake. There are videos from survivors, rescuers and the bereaved. There are exhibits highlighting the heroic exploits of those who pulled together to help out, especially the several-thousand-strong, student volunteer army which materialised after a suggestion went out on Twitter. They shovelled silt, delivered drinking water and chemical toilets and just visited people. In the process they did much damage to the student reputation for laziness and dissolute living.



Remember that tower on the Cathedral? It's in the exhibition too:

Frankly, it doesn't look that bad when you think what it's been through.

Elsewhere, the Methodist Church I attended last time in Durham Street:

Is now a car-park:

What you can't quite make out, I don't suppose, and what is some small reminder, is that the car-park is called "Aldersgate". There are many, many of these "temporary" car-parks in the city now. The going rate would seem to be $1 to $3 per hour, but, frankly, it would appear to be a buyer's market.

The magnificent Oxford Terrace Baptist Church:

Isn't even a car-park. There is a temporary-looking building on the site, but the services are being held in a local school. I saw a picture shortly after the February earthquake when the old building was still standing - just. In the foreground was the church's noticeboard with the message - the building has been destroyed, but the church is fine.

My search last night for a meal started further round Oxford Terrace which used to be a row of bars offering every type of cuisine. Now, not so much:

Just behind the remains of this stretch of Oxford Terrace is one of the early responses to the earthquake. With almost all the city centre's shops closed or simply destroyed, dozens of shipping containers were brought in and adapted to form the Re:START mall:

There are cafés in containers, banks in containers, boutiques in containers and just about every other type of shop you can imagine. It's actually very well done and almost feels normal. Certainly it's one of the few places in the city that you might want to describe as "bustling". It would be a generous use of the word, but there isn't much call for it elsewhere at the moment.
To end on a more positive note, the charming New Regent Street, across the road from my hotel, which has the rather quirky feature of the two sides being mirror-images of each other, has survived, complete as far as I can see:

Sure, there are road works, and there won't be trams again for a while (a long while in this street, a few more weeks elsewhere), but the buildings are still there. Sadly, though, a good number are empty as businesses have just failed to survive in the absence of either tourists or locals. The street was in the red zone for many months - how many small businesses could cope with that?

The people of Christchurch are in for a long struggle - it's likely to be a decade or more before there is a substantial amount of change, although certain important buildings are scheduled for completion much sooner than that. There are still numerous buildings waiting to be demolished. Frankly, they almost look worse than the gap sites. Boarded up, they just remind you of what is gone. Even the boarding-up is looking scruffy after three years.

The people of Christchurch are becoming frustrated with the lack of progress. They are still leaving for other parts of the country. Without people, the city will struggle, but it's a chicken and egg problem. There's no real reason for anyone to visit the city, and without visitors (whether tourists or locals) how will you make a business pay?

The wasteland in front of my hotel looks likely to become part of a square park encircling the immediate city centre. Tentative plans show lots of green space and low-rise buildings. It will be a great city again, but right now, it's a pretty desolate place.

*Munted - a New Zealand term essentially meaning "wasted". Can also be used of people, but the damage there is usually self-inflicted.