AUGUST 10 2019 LISTENER 63
February 22, 2011.
The nation was still
thanking its stars
that Christchurch’s
massive earthquake
the previous year had
resulted in only one
death when its hor-
rifying sequel struck
on February 22, 2011.
Collapsing
masonry and the
pancaking of an
entire building
killed 185 people,
and liquefaction
rendered vast tracts
of the city uninhabit-
able forever. And the
earth kept bucking.
The stress of inces-
sant aftershocks – still
occurring today –
caused depopulation
and psychological
damage many still
grapple with. On to
bereavement and
stress was heaped a
long-running lottery
of injustice. It has
still been technically
unfeasible to hold
anyone to account for the structural
defects of the Canterbury Televi-
sion Building, the collapse of which
killed 115 people. Further legal and
bureacuratic technicalities, combined
with the sheer logistics of damage
assessment and rebuild, meant many
householders spent years waiting for
compensation and remediation of their
damaged homes. Some were ripped
off by the unscrupulous or slap-dash
assessments. Some
are still waiting for
redress.
Rebuilding is well
under way following
a Government-led
redesign, but the
city centre remains a
patchwork of vacant
lots, their futures
unclear, as some
landowners have
simply walked away.
Total damage has
been estimated at
$40 billion, making
it one of the world’s
biggest insurance
events, with total
claims estimated as
high as $35 billion.
The catastro-
phe spurred the
Government and
local councils to
drastically revise
our mandatory
national buildings’
earthquake-resil-
ience standards,
the urgency
underscored when
quakes in Wellington
rendered several recently built towers
unsafe and beyond remediation.
A lasting symbol of the quake’s
divisive aftermath is the husked
ChristChurch Cathedral, still propped
up by girders in its shambolic partial
collapse. After furious local and national
debate, the Anglican synod voted by a
narrow margin to restore the landmark,
accepting the offer of a Government
subsidy.The internet
arrives
Facebook is eating the print
media’s lunch. Since 2008, four
years after the social media giant
came into being, the circulation of
Christchurch’s Press and Welling-
ton’s Dominion Post have fallen by
more than half.
The country’s biggest daily
newspaper, the New Zealand
Herald, which in 1992 sold more
than 250,000 copies a day, now
sells fewer than 105,000. Last year,
Stuff, which owns the Press and
DomPost, closed more than a third
of its newspapers.
According to an Auckland
University of Technology study,
Facebook is the third-biggest “news
consumption platform” in the
country, yet it produces no content.
If news media are to survive, the
study says, Facebook and search
engine Google may need to start
paying a “public media tax”.Christchurch
earthquakes