Resilient Christchurch on the mend four years after the earthquake
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Version 0 of 1. Shortly before one o’clock in the afternoon, on 22 February 2011, weekday lunchtime in the central business district, the earth shook, 185 people died, and Christchurch, the Garden City of New Zealand, suffered such devastation that even four years on, the recovery process has scarcely begun. The England team hotel stands on Cathedral Square, in the very heart of the city. Look out from the top floors and there below is the ruin of the Gothic cathedral that brought the city its name – its spire and tower, with its 13 bells, gone, and the west wall, with its rose window, collapsed. Beyond that are open spaces, car parks now or just waste ground, where once stood buildings. On the other side of the square is the Millennium hotel, where the team and press used to stay, the building upright still but unsafe, boarded up and closed off. Gone are places once familiar to those who have toured here before. The shock, measuring 6.3 on the logarithmic Richter scale, was not as strong as that of the previous September – 7.1 – which caused damage but no fatalities, but its intensity and concentration had rarely been felt in a city anywhere. Many believe that such movement would “totally flatten” most urban areas in the world which had not been constructed with the possibility of seismic events in mind. Structures already weakened collapsed, others had foundations so damaged that they became uninhabitable. Areas of the eastern suburbs were swamped by the sludgy silt of liquefaction that bubbled up. It was desolation. A weekend leader in the local paper, The Press, which lost one member of staff in the disaster and whose historic offices in Cathedral Square had to be demolished, bemoans the slowness of recovery, saying “we still seem to be very far from the tipping point – that stage when we can walk through a city which is largely restored”. The debate still rumbles on as to whether the cathedral, as a matter of priority, should be restored as a symbol of the resilience of the city, or demolished. However, to a visiting eye, life is returning. A quarter of a mile from the hotel is the Re:Start Mall where small retail outlets, food stalls and cafes occupy brightly coloured shipping containers instead of shops. It’s just one of several initiatives in the city but it exudes not just enterprise and inspiration but also optimism. A couple of miles away, the old rugby ground of Lancaster Park, where New Zealand and England have played cricket Test matches, and the All Blacks and Crusaders their rugby, still stands as a derelict monument to what once was. It was there in 2002 that Nathan Astle pulverised England with the fastest double century in Test history. Yet from that has sprung something better. As the city took time out to remember the devastation, a ceremony took place in the Botanical Gardens (England were committed to their training schedule, but Paul Downton, managing director of England cricket, attended as did Heather Knight, vice-captain of the England women’s team and their all-rounder Laura Marsh, who are in Lincoln, outside Christchurch, for the fourth T20 international against the White Ferns). The 400 or so acres of Hagley Park in which the gardens are located was alive with its Sunday cricket matches as it always has been, but at its heart now is Hagley Oval. It’s an area where provincial cricket has been played for many years but now stands a beautifully designed new ground – not a stadium – for international cricket, surrounded by trees and parkland, intrinsically of New Zealand. It has been expanded for this World Cup, with temporary stands that, once the last game has been played, will be taken down to leave the grass spectator banks. The return of top-level sport has been an integral and importantly tangible part of the regeneration of the city. The Crusaders and All Blacks now play their matches at Rugby League Park, which itself had suffered damage but was reparable. Lancaster Park had not seen a Test match for three years prior to the earthquake – when Sri Lanka were beaten – but on Boxing Day last year Hagley Oval saw Test cricket’s return, together with that of Sri Lanka, an occasion marked by Brendon McCullum scoring the fastest ever hundred by a New Zealander. Already here in this World Cup New Zealand have beaten Sri Lanka, and, over the weekend, Pakistan lost to West Indies. Now, for Hagley Oval’s final match of this tournament, England have returned to the city for the first time since 2008 to face their Scottish challenge. They may have been seduced into thinking that the Avon river – now known jointly by its Maori name Otakaro – which runs through the city and borders Hagley Park, evokes thoughts of home. They would be wrong: the river’s name is derived from the Scottish Avon. And Scottish will be the supporters who travel the couple of hours from Dunedin to the south. It is clever, if blatantly obvious, scheduling. There would be points to prove all round. |