On Shaky Ground
It has been six months since the devastating earthquake tore Christchurch apart. We sent Dateline's David Brill there just after the disaster occurred. People were still in shock from what they'd experienced. Now, he's been back and found contrasting emotions. Many residents have begun rebuilding their shattered homes and lives. Others see the future, filled with despair.
REPORTER: David Brill
NEWSREADER: New Zealand is reeling tonight after the South Island city of Christchurch was rocked by a magnitude 6.3 earthquake.
PROFESSOR MAAN ALKAISI: I was at the university when the earthquake hit. I switched the TV on, and I was looking at the footage of the centre of the city and bang, I saw the CTV building sign on the floor, and it's all dust, I couldn't see even the building.
Maan Alkaisi's wife, Maysoon, was working at the medical clinic on the fourth floor of that building when the quake hit.
PROFESSOR MAAN ALKAISI: Obviously the worries start to build up until I just couldn't stand it, so I drove all the way to the CTV building and I saw the fire, smoke coming out of the building, and I saw that the building there's actually nothing left of it - Just rubble. And I said, "Oh God, this is not happening. She doesn't deserve this".
This is where Maan's wife and 115 others lost their lives. 6 months after that horrendous day, much of the CBD is still in ruins, under army control and in lock down. Near the earthquake's epicentre in the town of Lyttelton, there's also a lot of rebuilding yet to be done.
JOHN SELLWOOD: Things have been shored up, I'll show you through. When you were here, we had a tonne of bricks, because I remember you had to run because the bricks were in the ceiling.
I first met John Sellwood just days after the disaster.
JOHN SELLWOOD: This is the bedroom, be careful, that chimney is about to go, rush through here, that's the alarm!
REPORTER: Bloody hell.
Today, John and his wife Helen are still struggling to put the pieces back together.
JOHN SELLWOOD: They came out of the ceiling there, wall's been pushed through, propped up.
REPORTER: And you put that prop up there.
JOHN SELLWOOD: Yep. But that means we've really no heat in here which may seem a small thing but it's a big thing when you've got snow outside. Everything's on pause. You've got to wait till the money comes through for the insurers to pay, if I go fixing that, there's no guarantee that I'm going to get it paid out or that I do something that's structural, so you just wait.
REPORTER: Right, and this has been 6 months. Now when we were here last time we had a few aftershocks, remember we rushed out?
JOHN SELLWOOD: There comes a point. Okay, move!! I think it's 7,500 earthquakes since September.
REPORTER: 7,500 earthquakes?
JOHN SELLWOOD: Yeah, I mean they call them aftershocks, but if you feel them, they're an earthquake, it doesn't matter if they're an aftershock. You get to a point where you can go, "Normality, it's going to be okay". And then one of these buggers comes through and whacks, not just the buildings, but confidence.
REPORTER: What about pressure on relationships?
JOHN SELLWOOD: You come to those very crucial, you know, "I love you and we're going to see our way through this," or "It's too hard and I'm walking away," you have to face those kind of things, I think. Helen collected China and she spent months for her psychologically going through each of these pieces like a jigsaw, and trying to make them fit back together, it's been part of how she's coped with putting her world back. This represents her broken life, and for her, it's been a process of putting it all back together.
Back in Christchurch and the mammoth job of putting the CBD back together is underway.
ROGER SUTTON, EARTHQUAKE RECOVERY AUTHORITY: They're not agreeing to sell us their house, they are merely agreeing for us to talk to their insurance company.
Roger Sutton is in charge of the recovery and rebuilding effort, but before reconstruction can start, 1200 buildings need to be demolished in the CBD alone. It's going to be a long time before the city centre is anything like it used to be.
ROGER SUTTON: After the first quake, I think people felt a lot of those significant historical buildings were going to be saved, but as time has gone on, there have been further aftershocks, and a lot of those buildings have suffered further damage, and it is getting increasingly hard to save them. It is going to be 6 months or a year before the fundamental services are back to normal. But the full rebuild, getting everything back to normal, whatever normal is, that is 5 to 10 years away.
MAYOR BOB PARKER: This work will grow the GDP of New Zealand by several per cent - we are entering a boom period and we'll need more workers.
Mayor Bob Parker is determined to see the positives.
MAYOR BOB PARKER: So the board is supportive of having a shared community facility in that area.
At this council meeting, residents are sharing their ideas on how they want their new city to look.
MAYOR BOB PARKER: Over 106,000 people have put ideas down, out of a population in the city of over 400,000. Tremendous response, they are shaping the future of the cit
But out in the suburbs, people are feeling left out and are getting frustrated.
ANDY HORSBORO: The whole house is just broken in half and that crack actually goes right through there, right along the top there, goes through the next room, and right through the other side of the house now. We don't sleep upstairs there now. It doesn't feel safe.
While Andy Horsboro's house may not be safe, the government has zoned his land green, meaning that it's stable and secure to rebuild on. Andy isn't convinced.
ANDY HORSBORO: There's not a hope in hell that I would build here again knowing what I know now. I can show you underneath here where we're standing it's full of silt. You get wound up and I don't sleep too well and sometimes you feel like having a bit of a cry, but you're meant to be a bloke and get over it, but it's not easy to get over it.
MATHEW PAGE: Well, the government has effectively zoned land in Christchurch either red or green.
Andy's neighbour Mathew Page is angry he has missed out on compensation by just a few metre.
MATHEW PAGE: But there are houses in close proximity just across the street here, which have been zoned red, which means they are getting a payout based on the government's valuation
REPORTER: To leave those homes over there and walk away from them with a cheque to restart their lives somewhere?
MATHEW PAGE: That's right and we are literally just based across the road and we're green and for some reason they've deemed that our land is safe to rebuild on.
That means he misses out on the government's red zone offer, leaving him hundreds of thousands of dollars worse off than his neighbours across the street.
REPORTER: How can it be just over there on one side of the street and not on the other? Explain that if you can.
ROGER SUTTON: Well there's always going to be a line. There's always going be a line where one side is judged to be engineeringly sound and a line where the land isn't actually good enough. People are wanting to know, can they appeal the evaluation? Can they take their marble bench top with them? Can they pick up their whole house and take it somewhere else? And at the moment we just don't have answers to some of those questions.
REPORTER: Do you want to get out of here?
MATHEW PAGE: Absolutely. I don't want to get out of Christchurch, but we want to get on with our lives and move to an area that has better quality land and better quality soil that isn't going to liquefy every time there is an earthquake.
As well as the red and green zones, there's another - the orange zone - an in-between category where frustrated residents are still waiting to hear the fate of their land. It includes the suburb of Kaiapoi.
BECK HART: You can feel it when you walk in.
REPORTER: It's sloping all down.
BECK HART: It goes up hill.
The foundations of Beck Hart's house have shifted.
REPORTER: Is it safe?
BECK HART: I presume so.