Where abouts were you stationed Ty? I go along bealey & fitzgerald aves quite a bit, I might have driven past you
I don't know if that student loan thing would really do anything TBH, sounds like they're using it as a way to emotionally blackmail loan-skippers into paying back their loans.
Last time I was stationed along Barbados Street from Ferry Road to Cambridge Terrace, (depending on the time/day.) I'm pretty sure the cordon's changed a bit since then. Not sure where I'll be for the next deployment. Should be next down in late April, the details are being worked out. Apparently the Air Force doesn't want to fly us down so I'm going to suggest to out Cadre Sergeant that I use my, (admittedly limited,) Air rNew Zealand contacts to get a favour. An outside chance but worth it. Otherwise it's a two week deployment which I'm not sure I can make work with my boss.
And the student loan thing - It seems to be just a little "good idea" moment from Sir Paul, he sees it can do something towards fixing the outstanding expat student loan thing and benefit Christchurch, he sees it as a win-win. The insulting thing is that he makes this so-called great plan for some of the poorest NZers to pay money that they owe only because his generation fucked them over in the first place, meanwhile people like him not only don't pay for the Christchurch recovery when they are far more able to but profit from it. For an incredibly intelligent man, and Sir Paul is incredibly intelligent, this counts as a massive lapse of consideration.
I can remember on the sunday just prior to the big shake coming out of Christchurch airport seeing all the USAF C-130s at deep freeze and thinking "the USAF has more hercs in christchurch than the RNZAF has in all of NZ"...
If you take away the first two or three seconds where its not shaking very much, the quake scene in the latest BF3 preview is a fairly realistic depiction of the aftershocks we've been getting: (0:20-0:35)
Hopefully. I'm glad to see the aussie government is buying another C-17 because those things have been invaluable in Afghanistan, QLD Floods, NZ earthquake and Japan. Possibly the best "off-the-shelf" purchase we have ever made.
You know I'm really stocked that there's all these International charity initiatives going on for Japan but I can't help feeling a little forgotton about. A mean a meer three weeks after the Christchurch earthquake hit and the International community, (apart from Australia,) just completely forgot about us. True enough that Japan's earthquake, tsunami, fire, Chernobyl nuclear meltdown and Godzilla attack certainly needs it more than we do but Hell, it'd be nice to get a little attention once in a while. After the Queensland Floods I was constantly coming across little messages of support to donate to the Premier's Flood Appeal from unlikely sources and it was nice. For Christchurch I've seen zip. Bear Grylls did something since he was there at the time and that was cool. Phil Keoghan did something too but he's a New Zealander so I'm not sure that counts.
Was due to go back down there next week but like I said the air force is shit so I couldn't go. Looks like there'll be army rotations down there for a long time yet so I'll probably be on the next one.
These are some photos I took when I was in Christchurch a month or so ago. Around 500 buildings will have to be demolished over the coming months and years - which is pretty much the entire CBD and then some. The Christchurch Cathedral is pretty much beyond repair, at the moment they're just trying to save what they can. The recovery is expected to cost 8% of NZ's GDP. To put that in perspective Japan's recovery is expected to cost 4% of their GDP.
Met the guy who owned the business next to this - equally destroyed. Guy was keeping a positive outlook but knew there was no way he could recover. He tried to salvage a few things but the building was too dangerous to enter and the cops had to get him to leave.
Couple of collapsed buildings in a more resdential area.
Somone's two story home.
In the background the Hotel Grand Chancellor with its collapsing left side. In front of that is the elevator column from the CTV building where 116 people were killed. They've since completely cleared the area and there are proposals to turn it into a memorial garden.
A 5.5 2hrs ago then another 6 an hour or so ago, and all the attendant aftershocks. Might not seem big but when theyre right under your city and 6 miles deep you really get thrown around a bit. House shaking every few mins feels like the city is being bombed
A building or two collapsed in the latest series of jolts and a few people were trapped, thankfully no-one was killed.
To be honest I'm just thinking the best option is to abandon the whole fucking place and build the city somewhere else. Hell, Auckland's built on a fucking volcano field and it doesn't have this many disasters.
Actually screw that, I'd still rather live in Christchurch than Auckland.
Edit: Just seen pictures of Timball Station which was damaged beyond repair in the Feb quake. It has now just collapsed in on itself. Saves demolition teams the work I suppose.
I've spent the day shovelling liquefaction out of my uncle's driveway - again. I expect to be there tomorrow, and the day after.
After receiving more seismic data, GNS has upgraded yesterday's two big shakes from 5.5/11km deep and 6.0/9km deep to 5.7/10km deep and 6.3/6km deep, respectively. The 6.3 felt violent, but shook for nowhere near as long as the 6.3 on Feb 22.
Nobody died in this one, which is good. Most of the destroyed buildings are buildings which were probably going to be demolished anyway.
I've been working in the CBD for a bit recently, but was off work yesterday so I could attended a job interview (I got the job, too, junior PHP dev )
If you look for the little red building and follow that street to the right, the building I was working in is on the edge of the picture next to the empty lot with the blue fence. Looking at that photo, and having seen some of the stuff up close, I'm not surprised some of those buildings fell over, in fact I'm surprised they didn't fall over during some of the smaller shocks.
Video of some kids making a home video when the 6.3 hit:
One year on from the first shake in the series on September 4 2010 and we're still getting aftershocks on that fault system, though thankfully they only seem to no higher than the 4 range now (typically 3s), and we're often going a week without feeling anything.
On a positive note, even though around 50,000 people worked in the CBD, only 1000 are unemployed as a result of it, which is far fewer than even the most optimistic were expecting. A lot of businesses are working out of peoples houses, from non-CBD office parks, suburban shopping centres/malls or even from container offices. I'm working either from home or in a sleepout-come-office attached to my bosses garage. Not having to pay rent is saving him money, and being far away from places to spend money on my lunch break is saving me money
In middle earth its pretty much scorched earth, Sarumon's crane is destroying all, and to my honest disgust the americans haven't been given any jobs yet. Thats a real shame, seeing some shit being blown up would be truly awesome, and quite theraputic for a lot of people, and...well...shit being blown up, come on!!
You'll pay a dollar or two (gold coin donation) to go on a tour'de'devastation which will show you this.
TL;DW: <VoiceView android:accent="kiwi|white|male|monotone">"This building is coming down, this one, this one, this one isn't...etc"</VoiceView>
Also, waterways have finally been cleared of temporary poos/wees dumping, and we'll no longer have chlorine in the drinking water as of early/mid December.
Same shit as June. I'm just glad there are a few of around this sort of magnitude rather than one bigger one. Because they are so shallow and so close, they feel a lot bigger than the reported magnitude suggests.
I was at a local mall for the first of three, that evacuated pretty quickly and there weren't as many screams as I thought there would be. A few expat friends were with me at the time, I was about to take them on a tour of the damage when the first one hit. The welcome home/earthquake experience was a little different to what I had planned for them, but didn't disappoint
Power is back on already, a few things fell over including a full 1L bottle of olive oil which was fun to clean up. I'm going to put in another claim with EQC, as the ceiling looks like it might have warped a little, though I'm not certain of that.
Generally I'd consider anything above six big but it depends on the distance and the depth. 5.8 can be very strong and the ones in Christchurch are shallow.
