Wellington Civic Talk, April 12 2017

Wellington Civic Talk, April 12 2017

After living through the quakes in Christchurch and reporting on their aftermath after the big one in February 2011, I returned to Wellington to try and pick up where I left off.

I’d been away nearly seven years and felt torn between two cities. I hadn’t wanted to leave the capital city where I’d spent most of my adult life, but duty and ailing parents called and I had to go back to Christchurch, where even after the quake, people still ask younot what you do for a living, but where you went to school.

That’s primarily the reason why I settled in Wellington. I loved the capital because it seemed to be a place of social ease. It wasn’t stuck in the mud. It wasn’t a town where you had to carry your history and breeding credentials round with you in your breast pocket.

Wellington was a melting pot of parties and pubs frequented by people who came from all over the place, and from all walks of life. Public servants, poets and politicians mingled drank, argued and talked - a lot. It seemed fabulously Rabbelaisian and bohemian after Christchurch and the small north Canterbury town of Rangiora I grew up in.Canterbury was a deeply conservative place in the sixties and seventies, and I remember a division which seems truly bizarre now, between the Catholics and the protestants. In fact I only really met Catholics when I worked for the newspaper and realised that most of them were Mickey Doos and wonderfully gabby with it.

Wellingtonseemed wild and free. It had a buzz to it, probably caught it from the Beehive, and the close proximity to political power seemed exciting. The architecture in the late seventies might have been a little post Stalinist and grim but there was the lovely waterfront to soften the ugly brutalism.

I remember being absolutely amazed one day while swimming at Oriental Bay to look back to shore and see a business man strip off his suit, jump in the water then lie in the sun to dry off before climbing back into his work uniformand strolling back to work around the waterfront. What freedom. People seemed to be living an organic switched on life.

The beaches in Wellington might not have sand dunes and huge crashing waves but they were so accessible, and the drive around the south coast wasabsolutely sensational. They say you can’t beat Wellington on a good day, and what a treat, on a good day to be able to see the South Island that looked so close you could almost reach out and touch it.

I’ve always made sure that the houses I’ve lived in in Wellington are within walking distance to the city. Where I am now it takes me five minutes and I’m in Cuba Street, and I can catch a bus to Manners Street and back twice in under an hour. I love the compactness of this city and its walkability. How could anyone possibly tolerate the spread out, car congestedthird rate LA of Auckland with its lack of decent public transport after Wellington?

So when I went back to Christchurch, it was a real wrench to leave the beloved capital. Those seven years down there were torrid. The death of two parents,one after the other, followed by the earthquakes made for challenging times and adventure packed times and I wrote extensively about that period in columns which were made into a book.

Watching my car get totalled by a falling chimney made me concerned about my Wellington house and I was worried that if my chimneys toppled they would fall right into the path of my neighbour’s front door while they were fleeing their house. I rang a builder and what turned into a small renovation to remove them, became a major project in a house that hadn’t had its teeth fixed since it was bornback in 1900.

After the February 2011 quake I hung around Christchurch having fallen in love with the four seasons and the people I’d met in the quake. I was curious to see how the story would turn out and remained there for three years after 2011. But time was marching on and I knew if I didn’t return to Wellington I would lose contact with thirty year-oldfriendships.

Benecio, my cat was as bewildered as I when we walked in the door to a house that looked the same outside but was totally new in the interior. It was the same, but radically different. Further afield Wellington too had changed considerablyin the seven-year absence.

It had turned into a very young city teaming with beautiful girls with long tanned legs in shorts and hirsute bearded beanie wearing men. There were students and young groovers swarming Cuba St and I felt positively elderly coming from a city where the majority of the populace seemedmiddle-aged.

Having lived in the middle of the city in post quakeChristchurch cleared out of residents,everyone having fled to the west, it took me ages to get used to the throbbing metropolis.

I remember feeling almost nauseous and overwhelmed at the traffic and the crowds. I had become a country hick and I felt extremely nervous about walking down Cuba Street and in Newtown imagining the mortar falling if there was a shake.

I’d got into the habit of looking up to see what could fall on you. It was a hard habit to break and I was terribly conscious that the narrowness of Wellington’s streets gives you nowhere to run, nowhere to hide when the bricks and mortar fall.

When I voiced this to friends and acquaintances I could see they thought I was being neurotic. If you haven’t been through a big shake you have no idea what it’s like when everything falls down around you in a matter of seconds.

I was in a café at the time and was sitting at a table looking at the picture framer’s old building opposite as it dismantled completely in seconds. I was going to walk into that building for a chat with the picture framer but thought I’d get a coffee first. We would both have been killed if the call of caffeine hadn’t come through for me that terrible day.

I started to mentally undress each and every new building I was in. How up to code was it?What sort of picture hooks were those paintings hanging from, did the building have steel strengthening, and hey, where did that steel hail from? This over-thinking quake mentality was overwhelming and cramping my life. I’m glad to say that eventually it wore off and good old complacency set in so I could go about my business and get about in the world without obsessive Chicken Lickening.

Along with the re-entry shock into a proper city that worked, delayed grief from my parents’ death hit and I had that to attend to. I suppose I was experiencing a bit of PTSD too and felt embarrassed, a bit of a sook. The drama of the quakes and their aftermath were all consuming and it meant I didn’t have had proper time to mourn Mum and Dad.

When people made appointments to meet me in town I would suggest places I thought would be quake safe. I kept wondering – what the hell am I doing back in this hood that seemed like one giant accident waiting to happen.

I must admit I was alarmed whenboth the Newtown and Cuba Street festivals were allowedto proceed. Imagine the finger-pointing, blame and accusations of manslaughterif a quake had hit and thephysical harm done to festival attendees. Deathsand maiming from falling facades would have been inevitable.

Those festivals shouldn’t be held again until the problem buildings the council has identified have been brought up to standard. Look at what happened with the CTV building in Christchurch. It could happen here or history will repeat itself. Those buildings should be at least red stickered and notices put up to warn shoppers, but that doesn’t help pedestrian traffic walking outside them when they fall. Their dodgy facades at least need some sort of netting put over them now.

The scenario of what could happen to those buildings reminds me of that corny old earthquake joke - What happens in San Francisco when a building falls? They say its San Andreas’ fault. In this case we know whose fault it will be if those property owners haven’t pulled finger. The council has been patient and needs to stand on property owner’s throats.

When the big one hits in Wellington it will be much worse than Christchurch. Sure we won’t have same amount of liquefaction,and we have the beautiful town belt to flee to, but the problems for this cityare immense.

Like many Wellingtonians I have a weatherboard house which I take great comfort from because it moves in the quakes. But that is where the smugness ends. I know that if a house fire starts then it will be up to me to put it out.

The roads will be buckled and too damaged for lumbering fire trucks to navigate to put out all the many fires that will start up throughout the city from gas not turned off. We need to immediately take on board suggestions by veteran fire fighters like Gordon Baker that each house should have at last one fire extinguisher, and a garden hose to quickly put out small fires that could grow into big ones. Fires love hilly terrains and fires will climb them quickly eating up our suburbs. Wellington could burn to the ground. And the town belt could catch fire too.

Civil defence ads should include demonstrations about how to put out small fires that happen not only in your home, but in your street. The message should be about empowerment, becoming your own fire-fighter. If you have a motorbike or cycle bike helmet it should be kept by the door so you can put it on your head to protect against falling buildings, chimneys, burning buildings. Incidentally my chimneys may have been removed but if I ran outside in a quake I’m under the direct trajectory of my neighbour’s dodgy looking chimney. Let’s get those chimneys down quickly.

Water reservoirs are designed to turn off immediately post quaketo preserve all available water so there is only a limited amount of time you will be able to use garden hoses.

Community strengthening should be happening now. We need to know what the drill is with our neighbours, our street, and where our gathering points are. We need to get our heads around the fact that post quake it won’t be every man for yourself, it will be help yourself first and when you’re up and running help others toward getting the city back on its feet.

Remember what happened in Christchurch when residents in suburbs like Redcliffs turned up at civil defence points to find them locked up, no one knew who had the keys, or who was in charge. The likelihood of a big quake is huge, and so is a tsunami.

Chances are the tarmac at the airport will be buckled and may have been swept away by a tsunami. No big planes will be able to land. The waterfront has already been compromised by theKaikoura quake. Containers may fall into the water and the harbour will be bobbing with debris from buildings, boats that have slipped moorings, and containers. Unlike Christchurch where a frigate was on hand in Lyttelton harbour to supply electricity, meals,medical aid and the far ranging squirt oftheirfire hoses, the harbour will literally become a danger to shipping.

Suburbs like Kilbirnie, Lyall Bay,Eastbourne, Petone,Seatounetcand all beach side properties on the south coast could be underwater. The main fault line running along the only road and motorway exit out of the city will be out of action. Wellington could be cut off for not weeks, but months. A guy from civil defence told me Miramar will be cut off for three months.Any help that will come from outside will be via helicopters, the only craft able to land.

Forget Internet and Broadband. If you don’t have copper wiring and an old style non battery powered landline phone, you will need battery back-up. I noticed in the Christchurch quakes how young people cracked up on about the third day of no electricity when theydidn’t have access to their cell phones, I-pads and lap tops

They quickly became depressed and listless expecting help to come immediately. The quake was somebody else’s problem, not their’s. The radical change that had happened to their bubble was a bore and a drag till normal transmission resumed and they could get back to the thumb suck of their screen dependency.

Who can blame them having been brought up in the La La land of Disconnect, an add water and stir culture, surrounded by the delights of bristling new technology.

Of course not all young people were like that. But I remembered being absolutely staggered by one of the young woman who had been brought up on a farm who was in our small back yard gang who wanted to lend a hand. One morning when she asked if she could do anything to help I replied, ‘Yes,could you get the fire started?’ Her response - ‘How do you I that?’

We need to think about creative ways of empowering young people to become not urban survivalists, but more in touch with an off-the-grid practical reality. The youth of Wellington can take a leaf out of the initiative and efforts of The Student Army created by Sam Johnson, the son of a south Canterbury farmer. The Army became much admired and its shovel-digging force beamed from the praise poured upon it.

Perhaps Survival 101 could be introduced as a subject at Vic University. Maybe they could start up community vegetable gardens in the town belt. Maybe hippies will come back in fashion. Maybe the earthquake won’t hit Wellington.

Lastly I want to talk about heritage buildings. Pre quake I was totally in favour or restoring old buildings, any old building and I loved Christchurch’s old art centre and am thrilled it has been restored. And I’m pleased about what’s happening with the Wellington town hall. But if a building’s too far gone, get it down quickly, it’s a killer and at the moment we have a series of killers. We can’t save all old buildings just because they’re old and a sentimental land mark.

After the Christchurch quake the citizens were invited to Share an Idea about what sort of city they wanted. There was massive response from the community to this and people were employed to register all the ideas.

People wanted a smart cutting edge contemporary city with a distinct style like Napier that would draw touristsfrom all over the world. Sadly, as so often happens, few of those ideas came to fruition, and tourists now by-pass Christchurch or go there, take a look at the patches of rebuild in the centre and the surrounding blocks of vacant land, observethe sad demise of the cathedral and the let-go square and move on quickly to Queenstown.

The Christchurch community was asked to share an idea, the consultancy box had been ticked,but their ideas were ignored. I suggest we need to start our consultation Share an Idea process now, get community buy-in and starttocompose a list of buildings the public believes are important and sacred to the city.

With it’s beautiful harbour, stunning waterfront and the linking theme of the town belt, that is Wellington’s realheritage. The buildings and the people are temporary, we are ants clinging to the surface, and we will find out when the dreaded big one hits, how the cards fall and who and what will survive.

For those that do, prepare to be alone and cut off for a very long time. Yourgreatest strength will be each other and what isproactively being prepared now. It is our first priority.Money should be no object to disaster planning and we need to know what that plan is so we can swing into action with it rather than collapse with the city.