Thousands flee Christchurch as rebuilding pondered (News Feature)

By David Barber Feb 28, 2011, 3:36 GMT

Wellington - Thousands of people who live and work in Christchurch do not want to stay there any longer although the New Zealand government has pledged to rebuild the country's second-largest city, which has been devastated by two earthquakes in six months.

Christchurch has barely stopped shaking since the first quake, a magnitude-7.1 tremor, hit in September, and for many, last week's shock - smaller at 6.3 but shallower and, therefore, more destructive and deadly - was the last straw.

More than 50,000 of the city's 390,000 people have flown out of its airport in the past week alone. Roads to the north and south have been blocked with vehicles carrying families fleeing with treasured possessions rescued from their homes wrecked in the February 22 quake, which killed at least 200 people.

Many vowed not to return to the so-called Garden City, established 150 years ago by British colonists as the most English of New Zealand settlements, complete with a River Avon and commercial centre bounded by streets bearing the names of cities in England like Oxford, Cambridge, Worcester, Gloucester and Manchester.

'This is no place to live any more,' 84-year-old Gloria Cotton was quoted as saying in Monday's New Zealand Herald. 'We can't live like this with the constant shaking.'

More than 5,000 tremors have rattled the region since September 4 in a city that was never thought to be a high-risk area even though New Zealand is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries.

Now it is not only its householders who face an uncertain future. Less than half the 2,940 buildings in Christchurch's central business district, where more than 50,000 people usually work, have passed initial inspections and might remain cordoned off for weeks or months because of the continuing threat of falling masonry.

A total of 755 buildings have been given no-go red stickers, indicating they would probably have to be demolished, and another 909 are marginal.

The condemned 26-storey Hotel Grand Chancellor, Christchurch's highest building, still stands only because authorities have not worked out how to bring it down without wrecking nearby properties.

The city's main landmark, the 1904 Gothic-style Anglican cathedral, lost its 65-metre spire, and Chamber of Commerce head Peter Townsend said, 'There is hardly a building that hasn't been significantly damaged.'

With entire blocks wrecked or certain to be demolished, larger retailers were expected to move to suburban shopping malls while many smaller businesses face ruin.

Many houses in some of the city's prime residential areas in attractive and wealthy suburbs like Sumner and the seaside resort of New Brighton were wrecked when cliffs that overlooked them collapsed in the quake.

Police evacuated another 60 houses in Redcliffs Monday on fears that a cliff with dangerous-looking cracks would engulf them.

Other suburban residential areas remained awash with slimy mud after quake-caused liquefaction of the ground on which houses stood. At least one national architect was questioning whether they should be rebuilt there.

'Many people may consider it is more sensible to think about their security in the future,' Ian Athfield said.

Despite the destruction, Mayor Bob Parker was optimistic, insisting, 'Christchurch can rise from the rubble, stronger, better designed and uniquely ready to face the challenges of a world vastly different from that contemplated by our founding fathers.'

But University of Auckland sociologist Tracey McIntosh told the Herald at the weekend that while some people would be resilient and prepared to reinvest in the region, others would say enough's enough.

'People will want to move themselves away from a sense of ongoing trauma - the visual and aural triggers which remind us of the event,' she said, predicting a continued exodus to other parts of the country and even to Australia.