Michael Batson

New Zealand’s second-largest city has 400,000 residents but big country town feel. Just a few streets from the CBD and you could be in a small regional town with one-tenth of the population. It’s noted for the picture postcard idyll with the Southern Alps’ backdrop complete with earthquakes but with other less inviting undercurrents.

On 4 September 2010, Christchurch made world headlines when struck by a huge earthquake, more powerful than that which devastated Haiti earlier in January, yet with comparatively miniscule casualties.

Driving into the city past Hagley Park, where I had once lived as an undergraduate years before, but little has changed. When the northwesterly wind blows, temperatures in the city can hit the thirties, during winter there is sleet and sometimes snow. Christchurch has distinct seasons; a cold winter, warm spring, mild autumn and hot summers. Japanese tourists book weddings here years in advance to have bridal photos taken amongst the blossom. The grey stone churches along Riccarton Road do a nice earner in Asian weddings.

On Hagley Park, the large parklands and Botanical Gardens set aside by the city’s founders bordering the CBD, a game of Kilikiti was underway, Polynesian cricket played with a shoulder-less bat by gargantuan men in lavalavas – Pacific island sarongs. Auckland is the largest Polynesian city on earth, but Christchurch retains an overwhelming European flavour, to the point of being, aside from temporary visitors, seemingly mono-cultural.

Crossing this park as I once did almost daily, I once saw a tourist down on his hands and knees videoing the turf – bizarre! From Christchurch it’s a day’s travel to some wonder sights; Kaikoura whale watching, the wild West Coast, Lewis Pass and Hamner Springs, Central Otago, Wanaka, Queenstown and on to the misnamed (it’s actually a fjord) Milford Sound.

The initial quake in September was a magnitude 7.1 earthquake on the Richter Scale and struck at 4.35am and causing widespread damage, much of it centred in Christchurch, fortuitous then, as most people were at home asleep at the time.  The CBD, containing many masonry buildings, was extensively damaged. The sewerage system was damaged, gas and water lines were broken, and power to up to three-quarters of the city was disrupted.

A state of emergency was declared for the city. People inside the Christchurch city centre were evacuated, and the city's central business district closed. An all night curfew was imposed and the army deployed to assist police and enforce the curfew. All schools were closed so they could be checked. In all, some 63 aftershocks were also reported in the first 48 hours with three registering over 5.0 magnitude. Residents reported chimneys falling in through roofs, cracked ceilings and collapsed brick walls. Since then over 3000 earthquakes have been recorded including quakes on Boxing Day causing further damage, and even significant jolts on New Year’s Eve.

When I stayed there, I was awoken in the early hours by sudden jolts eight stories up. Apparently, these had become so prevalent over time that hotel employees working in the CBD were being given stress counselling and senior mangers had taken to sleeping on the premise to add a measure of reassurance to staff with increasingly frayed nerves.

The US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, paid a visit to the city in November to praise citizens and staff of the US Antarctic programme based as Christchurch airport for their resoluteness. Christchurch has a history of involvement in Antarctic exploration – both Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton used the port of Lyttelton as a departure point for expeditions.

US media visitors reporting on the workings of the Antarctic programme, of which New Zealand has its own at Scott Base – were amazed that the telephone numbers for New Zealand's Antarctic facilities at Scott Base are printed in the Christchurch telephone directory. The Antarctic Centre located a stone’s-throw from Christchurch Airport is affordable and well worth a visit. Giant US Globemaster and Hercules transport planes sit brooding on the airport tarmac, ready for the descent into the white wonderland to the south or north to the tropical climes of Hawaii.

That the quake afflicted Christchurch was somewhat of a surprise, given a major quake is more likely expected to strike elsewhere in the country. New Zealand sits astride major geological fault lines between two tectonic plates, the Australian and the Pacific, on the Ring-of-Fire, the grid of tectonic behemoths that dominate the Pacific basin. One every 15 seconds is recorded, though most are too small to notice. Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences scientist John Ristau says while quakes of such magnitude were expected every so often in the South Island, the area of the Christchurch quake was not known to be particularly seismically active.

The major city most likely under threat in New Zealand is Wellington, where the impact of a quake of such magnitude would likely be catastrophic. The land transport routes would likely be cut off, there being only two major arterial routes out of the city. A harbour city, tsunami would likely cause widespread damage to infrastructure and loss of life in low lying areas. It’s estimated that Lambton Quay, one of the main city thoroughfares, would be three metres deep in broken glass. A major fault runs down the Terrace, where many government departments are headquartered, including the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management.

Geographically, Christchurch lies on flat land east of the Canterbury Plains. Nearby the city are the volcanic slopes of the Port Hills separating it from Banks Peninsula.

Christchurch is one of a group of only four cities in the world, that have been carefully planned following the same layout of a central city square, four complimenting city squares surrounding it and a parklands area that embrace the city centre. The closest relative is Adelaide in South Australia also designed by Colonel William Light (1786-1839) whose father had settled Penang, the first British outpost in the then territory of Malaya.

Like Adelaide, Christchurch was established following an idealistic blueprint of colonisation designed by Edward Gibbon Wakefield. Wakefield held the Smithsonian notion that the key to colonisation was bound up in the price of the land.  He devised his scheme, which became known as the ‘Wakefield System’, while doing time in Newgate Jail for the abduction of a 15-year-old heiress.  The system was underpinned by the idea, that if the price of land were too low, then the colonisation would only be undertaken by the economically challenged, who would therefore remain so in their adopted country.

In order to prevent this, Wakefield thought that if the price of land were expensive, then it would attract capitalists and entrepreneurs who supposedly would generate funds from land sales to pay for the passage of labourers and tradesmen from the old country.  They of course would do the hard graft for the capitalists, and because they all harboured middle-class aspirations, would eventually save enough money to buy their own land; and therefore employ more people in turn.

Housing is invariably single-level low density, with most residents living in the surrounding suburbs, factors which contributed to the low level of injuries incurred by the earthquake. The only recorded fatality was a man who was believed to have suffered a heart attack in the aftermath of the quake. Other injuries were broken bones, bruising and abrasions. Strict building codes in New Zealand enforced after the 7.8 magnitude 1931 Napier earthquake, in which at least 256 people died, also contributed to the negligible injuries. Inner city apartment living is relatively low density with most blocks of a reinforced design, escaped unscathed.

The same cannot be said however, for many of the civic ecclesiastical buildings designed by architect Benjamin Mountford during the nineteenth-century in the Gothic Revival style, including the original university buildings which were damaged.

Entry to buildings is determined by a series of coloured stickers, green is good, red is not. A red sticker says that for reasons of safety it is prohibited to approach or enter the building. The print on the warning is so small however, that one has to approach to within close proximity in order to read what is says, though once you’re read one, you know what all they all say. Many of the buildings on Lichfield Street heading east are red-stickered. Two-story masonry structures dating largely from early last century with boarded windows and cracked facades.

Christchurch is a city centre bounded by four main avenues. Most of the inner-city streets are named after Irish cathedral towns, curious in a city founded by English Anglicans. “More English that the English” was once said of the people here. Near the centre of town and the Arts Centre sits Christ College, an attempt by early colonists of the Canterbury Association with strong ties to Oxford University to replicate Britain’s public school system.

People from the region, Cantabrians, are parochial and conservative. They love their sports teams but no others. Christchurch has “old money” usually those living in the affluent suburbs of Fendalton and Merivale. “New money” are those who moved up – literally – to the Port Hills, where smog permitting, they can gaze across the flat cityscape. There’s a middle-class, professionals, working class and a certain underbelly comprising amongst others, poor white trash.

You will not find it in the guide books but an area bordering Cathedral Square was for years renown as having the highest levels of reported violent crime in New Zealand. The Square itself was often considered a no-go area after dark, to the extent that the Council asked the police to station officers there round the clock as a deterrent.

Christchurch has a high number of skinheads and gangs – clubs to their members, associates, and defence attorneys; and gangs to the judiciary, their victims, police and the prosecution. Biker gangs go by such names as; the Devil’s Henchmen, Epitaph Riders, Highway 61, Road Knights and the Templeton Mob. With the exception of the Highways, a seemingly multi-racial outfit who run most of the drugs, the others are white gangs with a low national profile. Then there’s the Mongrel Mob and the country’s largest gang, the Black Power. To be a Black Power member you need be Māori. Mobsters aren’t racially selective, but require a requisite criminal resume.

When I lived in Christchurch, I had skinheads living metres away at two separate locations. Early one morning I discovered armed police officers in the garden looking for a discarded firearm thrown from a car carrying skinheads. Later that same day, the garden was full of skin heads looking to retrieve the weapon. I was amazed to discover that some white power gangs have members who are part-Māori, meaning they’re violent, not very bright and confused. Aside from petty crime and making a nuisance of themselves they go about threatening immigrant families, often refugees seeking respite from their war torn homelands. Fortunately the police keep an eye on their activities, but they can’t be everywhere.

Most buildings constructed in Christchurch during the last 30 years escaped relatively unscathed and display their green stickers. Some, like the Auckland Savings Bank building in Cashel Mall are red stickered, though their frontage is modernised, the premises is housed in a much older structure and now out-of-bounds, the ATMs too. Rodd and Gunn, the fashion house across the way is fully stocked but similarly a no-go area. While the ASB clearly identifies directions to alternate premises, the fashion house does not.

Many of the older Gothic-style buildings have had to be strengthened albeit temporarily. Windows covered with plastic to prevent them falling out, or boarded up where they’ve already met that fate. Steel bands bolted around the circumference of churches, or large steel supports anchored to concrete blocks resembling exposed flying buttresses that now dot the cityscape. Some streets are still no go areas and are blocked off entirely.

The quake has resulted in home and business owners making thousands of claims to the Earthquake Commission (EQC), New Zealand’s primary provider of natural disaster insurance to residential property owners. Over 160,000 claims have thus far been made, of these some 48,000 have been processed, and over 18,000 claims have been paid out.

The September earthquake was the latest in a series of massive shocks along the Ring of Fire. Previously, two massive quakes occurred in New Zealand’s remote Fiordland region. In July 2007, a 6.7 magnitude quake struck, and in July 2009, a huge 7.8 earthquake hit quickly followed by a 6.1 aftershock sending warnings of tsunami across the Tasman to eastern Australia. The quake resulted in the land mass of New Zealand moving closer to Australia by several centimetres. Earlier in 2010, earthquakes also struck the Solomon Islands, Equador, Vanuatu and Chile, where over 700 died. In 2009, an earthquake sparked a devastating tsunami in that struck Samoa killing 189. Another huge quake hit Chile in early January 2011.

Christchurch is overwhelmingly Anglophile with just under 90 percent of its inhabitants of European descent. The city is also home to smaller communities of north Asian, Polynesians, Māori and small communities of refugees.

Archaeological evidence points to Māori having been in the region since about 1250. The Waitaha tribe, who migrated from the East coast of the North Island in the 16th century, who following tribal warfare were dispossessed by the Ngati Mamoe tribe. They were in turn subjugated by the Ngāi Tahu, who now hold major business interests in the South Island.

The city has a concoction of place names. Inner city suburbs are overwhelmingly Anglophile but also a British concoction; Beckenham, Sydenham, Addington and Riccarton, Bryndwr and Strowan. Some are indigenous, Opawa and Papanui. The outer suburbs raise eyebrows in misappropriated alliteration; Hoon Hay, Hornby, Halswell and Hei Hei.

European settlement in the area began from the 1840s when the city was founded as a Anglican colony. Christchurch Cathedral dominates the square in the city centre and was one of the Gothic Revival style building damaged in the quake. The New Year’s Eve celebrations to be held in the Square were scheduled to go ahead. City officials asked that those attending not panic if the celebrations were interrupted by yet more earthquakes. Rock on!