I do so want to go back for a visit, but it's going to be a long time before the infrastructure is all straightened out. It is cold right now too, and rainy and windy.
It's funny how Mother Nature can so quickly strip the smile off the happiest place on Earth:
The earthquake that devastated a city in New Zealand tore open a new 11ft faultine in the Earth’s surface.
The 7.1-magnitude quake which hit Christchurch, the country’s second-largest city, destroyed about 500 buildings and caused an estimated £930million of damage.
But hundreds of lives were saved by tough building rules, it was claimed. Only two injuries were reported.
The quake was caused by the continuing collision between the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates, said Professor Mark Quigley, of Canterbury University.
‘One side of the Earth has lurched to the right ... up to 11ft and in some places been thrust up,’ he said. ‘We went and saw two houses that were completely snapped in half by the earthquake.’
The quake cut power across the region, roads were blocked by debris and gas and water supplies were disrupted.
Christchurch mayor Bob Parker said power was back to 90 per cent of the city and water supply had resumed for all but 15 to 20 per cent of residents.
Portable toilets had been provided and tanks of fresh water placed around the city. Mr Parker said it would take a long time to fix fully some core services such as water and sewerage. ‘Our first priority is just people,’ he said. ‘That’s our worry.’
The fact that no one was killed was put down to the timing of the quake and strict building codes.
‘New Zealand has very good building codes which mean the buildings are strong compared with, say, Haiti,’ said Professor Martha Savage of Victoria University in the capital Wellington.
‘It’s about the same size quake as Haiti, but the damage is so much less. Though chimneys and some older facades came down, the structures are well built.’
The Anglican Dean of Christchurch, the Rev Peter Beck, added: ‘Thank God for earthquake strengthening ten years ago.’
Prime Minister John Key said it was a miracle no one was killed. He put that down to the building codes and because the quake happened just before dawn on Saturday.
‘If this had happened five hours earlier or five hours later there would have been absolute carnage in terms of human life,’ he said. Parts of the city look like they’ve been put in the tumble dryer.’
...Schools across the region will remain closed for the next two days to allow time to check whether they were safe.
Roger Bates, whose dairy farm at Darfield was close to the quake’s epicentre 19 miles west of Christchurch, said the new faultline had ripped up the surface across his land. ‘The whole dairy farm is like the sea now, with real soil waves right across the dairy farm.
‘We don’t have physical holes (but) where the fault goes through it’s been raised a metre or metre and a half.’
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