We started telling people we were going to New Zealand right
about the time of the first Christchurch earthquake. This understandably made friends and family
nervous. Then they had the second devastating earthquake, and we started having people ask us if we were still
planning to go there. Even a few days
before we had someone tell us not to bother because it was depressing and they
were still occasionally feeling aftershocks.
I still stubbornly refused to alter our plans, and I was glad we didn’t.
It has been nearly a year since the second big earthquake,
and the city center of Christchurch is still closed to both traffic and pedestrians. Much of downtown is punctuated with areas
like this:
While a lot of the rubble has been cleared away, they are
just now starting the process of demolishing a lot of the buildings downtown
that are unsafe. However, in October
they opened a walkway through a part of downtown and to the Cathedral in the
center of town, so the people of Christchurch could get a last look before demolition starts in January. Before
then, it had not been safe to pass through anywhere. Even so, they asked you to keep your ID on
your person and not in a purse as you walked through, and every person in and
out was counted. To our parents: We made it through with no problems, so don’t
worry through the rest of this description.
The Cathedral at Christchurch was the city’s grand
centre. It had a beautiful stained glass
rose window. This is what is left of the
Cathedral:
Depressing—definitely.
So why am I glad we went? Because
the people of Christchurch are amazingly resilient, and my visit downtown might
have shown me these disheartening sights, but it also afforded surprisingly
hopeful ones. Daniel read that they have
plans to build the Cathedral again twice.
Once out of cardboard (yes, a full scale cardboard cathedral), so that
people can still gather there for the 5-10 years it will take to rebuild a
permanent one.
We also came across sites like this:
It’s a community project to replant trees and flowers downtown called “Greening
the Rubble.” They seemed to be very
active already as we saw a profusion of spring flowers in the areas they have
started to rebuild, and even a small patch of sunflowers.
They even have built one of the coolest shopping areas I’ve
ever seen out of shipping containers.
There was one large department store downtown that survived. Around it they have built a temporary mall
that I thought was amazing:
They even had shipping container bathrooms:
Their food court was food trucks and picnic tables, which
added a decidedly festive air. There was
even the Salvation Army Band playing Christmas Carols while people did their
Christmas shopping:
This billboard in the background seemed to sum up what the
atmosphere of the city was: