A PERSONAL JOURNEY
 
FEBRUARY 22 to NOVEMBER ZULU

CHRISTCHURCH
 
          At the end of the lunch hour on a sunny summer day in February, Christchurch, New Zealand, shook violently then toppled into its streets. A relatively mild (6.3 Richter) earthquake brought this most English of cities down at 12:51PM last February 22. Almost 200 persons are dead or missing. The quake was called an aftershock to the stronger but much less damaging 7.1 Richter quake that shook Christchurch last September 4. This time the quake was much nearer the surface. Already weakened structures collapsed from its shaking. The city center fell, causing most of the loss of life. In the long term the greater calamity to Christchurch might be the large areas of its residential neighborhoods that may no longer be habitable due to liquefaction. These residential zones have been built on soft, sandy ground that earthquakes turn into flowing mud by upwelling of

 

CHRISTCHURCH CATHEDRAL CELEBRATING
150 YEARS OF CHRISTCHURCH IN 2000.
THE TOP HALF OF THE BELL TOWER SPIRE
COLLAPSED IN THE FEBRUARY 22, 2011
EARTHQUAKE. NO ONE WAS KILLED.
Photo © Home At First.
 

the water table. Liquefaction damage to property was 
widespread during September’s big quake. The February quake — weaker but much closer to the surface — produced much greater liquefaction, damaging roads, yards, fields, and structures, and, buckling sewer and water lines throughout the region. Today, more than a month following the quake, many Christchurch residents are using emergency sanitation: portapotties, mobile shower trucks, and backyard latrines.

          It was coincidental that I flew to New Zealand the week following the earthquake. When I arrived at Auckland, New Zealand’s biggest city — roughly 3.5 times the size of Christchurch — the international airport seemed unchanged and just as busy as my list visit. However, as soon as I entered the domestic terminal I experienced something new. A recorded announcement over the terminal’s PA system frequently played something like: “Arriving passengers from Christchurch can receive disaster counseling from these airport services…”

          My schedule had me traveling the length of New Zealand. Everywhere I went, Christchurch was the topic of conversation. For New Zealanders, the earthquake hit home hard. Christchurch and its region, Canterbury, are home to more than one in eight New Zealanders. The region — breadbasket, transportation hub, and industrial/ manufacturing center of the South Island — is responsible for 12% of the country’s economy. Most Kiwis — as New Zealanders are called, and call themselves — have friends or relatives who reside in or near Christchurch. Every Kiwi I talked to had been touched by the quake. Some stories are still vivid:

• The young man I sat next to on the flight from Los Angeles to Auckland was on his way to Christchurch to join his family, who were still in their house but without electricity, water, and sanitation. He would need a special pass to get beyond the guards restricting movements in and out of the city. He was sure he would be allowed in — he was returning from London where he is a divinity student. He hoped to help his family in the emergency. He hoped to offer comfort to the family of his childhood friend, a young man killed in the collapse of one of the modern high-rise buildings in the city center.

• Two guest rooms in a lodging I planned to visit in Dunedin were temporarily housing the teenaged nieces of the landlady. The nieces were refugees from Christchurch. They were no longer in Dunedin when I visited the inn. Their aunt explained that they had grown too homesick and returned to Christchurch where they would join their parents in a tent in the backyard with a latrine and without running water or electricity.

• Visiting a historic estate in a remote part of the Central Otago region of the South Island, I observed an elderly couple unsuccessfully hiding their emotions. The woman was sobbing in her husbands arms. “I don’t ever want to go home again,” she wept. “Christchurch has nothing for us now.”

• When surfing the internet looking for information on the quake, I found a video interview with a man I know, Brent Smith, whose large, historic, wood-frame home, Hambledon House, damaged severely in the September quake, was rendered beyond repair by the February 22 aftershock. The video interview with Brent takes place as he and his family watch a wrecking machine tear down the house. Brent admits to not being as brave as he thought he should. He lost this home. The temporary home he has been in since September has been too damaged to live in. Even his camper is unusable, having fallen in a hole opened up by the February quake. Hambledon House—until knocked off its foundations last September — had been among the Christchurch inns we have sent guests to these last several years. It is surreal to watch the Smith family watch their dreams be torn down in front of their eyes on the internet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8JRfgj3yvc.

         I was in New Zealand in large part to visit Home At First suppliers, especially those who provide our New Zealand travel program its high-quality lodgings. When I visit inns we currently use, I meet with the host-landlords and inspect and photograph the facilities. I also see lodgings that are candidates to be added to our roster. Despite Hambledon House being rendered unusable by the September earthquake, we still had three well-qualified lodgings in our CHRISTCHURCH stable. I had no plans to stop in Christchurch. With the extreme damage to Christchurch caused by the February quake, I couldn’t have visited the city even if I wanted to. No one was allowed in except emergency workers, some residents, and some key officials.  Moreover, it is increasingly clear that recovery and rebuilding central Christchurch will take months and years. At this point we do not know when we will be able to send guests there again.
 

OTAGO HARBOUR, DUNEDIN, NEW ZEALAND, MARCH 9, 2011. CHRISTCHURCH LIES IN RUINS A MERE 200 MILES TO THE NORTHEAST.
Photo © Home At First.
 

WELLINGTON HARBOUR, NEW ZEALAND, MARCH 10, 2011. LAMBTON QUAY (RIGHT CENTER BACKGROUND) AROSE FROM AN 1855 EARTHQUAKE.
Photo © Home At First.
 

 
THE NORTH ISLAND
 
          My flight from Christchurch landed in Wellington, New Zealand’s capital and — thanks to the depopulation of Christchurch — suddenly the country’s second-largest city. Like cities and towns across New Zealand, Wellington was sending personnel, materiel, and money to help Christchurch, and taking in refugees by the hundreds, maybe thousands. The two Christchurch earthquakes conflict Wellingtonians. Christchurch was not thought to be the likely site of New Zealand’s next Big One. New Zealand’s two islands extend along the Pacific Ring of Fire, and, thus, the earth can suddenly move anywhere in the country. However, say “earthquake” in New Zealand before last February 22 and most Kiwis will think of the city of Napier, leveled in 1931 (also February) by a quake and resulting fires that cost more than 250 lives. The rebuilding of Napier in the fashionable Art Deco style of the Thirties has made the small eastern NORTH ISLAND city a principal tourist destination in the HAWKES BAY region.

          Napier’s 1931 quake is better known, but New Zealand’s two biggest quakes during recorded history occurred not in Napier, or in Christchurch, but in the WELLINGTON REGION. The first — in 1848 — centered across the Cook Strait from Wellington in the Marlborough region, and measured about 7.5. It shook Wellington hard enough to destroy most masonry structures, but left wooden structures relatively untouched. Wellington quickly rebuilt, this time relying on the wood framed construction that makes the city’s architecture reminiscent of San Francisco. When a second big quake — estimated at 8+ — shook Wellington from close range in late-January of 1855, the rebuilt wooden city fared much better than it did seven years earlier, and only one death was reported. Still, Wellingtonians are very aware they sit on an active multi-fault line bordered by a nearly circular harbor. Indeed, much of what is now Wellington’s west-central harbor area of Lambton Quay is built on land that rose from the harbor during the 1855 earthquake.

          If not earthquakes, why not volcanoes? And why not AUCKLAND? New Zealand’s city of 1.4 million residents straddles a narrow neck of land that bridges two oceans. The city also straddles the Auckland Volcanic Field, responsible for four dozen local volcanoes, including some that formed in recent geologic time. In the central plateau of the North Island the volcanoes are much bigger than in Auckland, and some of them are active. The sleeping giant of geothermal activity has provided energy for the national grid, hot cauldrons and geysers for tourists, great lakes and streams full of huge trout for anglers, and high, snowcapped for skiers and hikers. Occasionally, the giant stirs, reminding residents of the ROTORUA & TAUPO that their region serves as a temporary playground in the time between major eruptions.
 

SUNRISE, VOLCANIC LAKE ROTORUA, NEW ZEALAND, MARCH 12, 2011. I SHOT THIS PLACID SCENE OF EARLY MORNING FISHERMEN
AS THE TSUNAMI FROM THE JAPAN EARTHQUAKE RACED INTO THE SOUTH PACIFIC EN ROUTE TO NEW ZEALAND'S NORTH ISLAND.
Photo © Home At First.
 

THE PACIFIC RING OF FIRE
 
          In Wellington I found two hours to visit Te Papa, New Zealand’s national museum, and I walked there along the beautiful promenade that traces the stunning harbor. Many of the exhibits in the state-of-the-art museum focused on New Zealand’s violent geology. One niche was devoted to the Napier earthquake. I expect museum planners are already at work deciding how to cover the Christchurch catastrophe. Te Papa, built by the water on reclaimed land from the earthquakes of 1848 and 1855, symbolically takes the same brave chance all Kiwis take by choosing to live atop the Pacific Ring of Fire.

          I drove north from Wellington on Friday, March 11, taking a crescent route to Rotorua via the west coast of the North Island so I could see the great, isolated volcano called Mt. Egmont, or Taranaki in Maori. I traveled for hours through a portion of New Zealand where we generally do not send our guests, but I had never seen the mountain and this stretch of the Tasman coast and had planned the experience into my itinerary. The hulking slopes of the great conical mountain — a poster child of a volcano if one is ever needed — dominated the region, but remained veiled in heavy cloud at the summit. After having it in shrouded view for more than two hours, the mountain suddenly appeared fully to me as I entered New Plymouth. I saw it for not more than ten seconds from a traffic jam of weekenders jumping the gun from work at about 2:30PM on this sunny Friday afternoon. By 7PM I was in Rotorua sitting by a volcanic lake with friends feeling like a weekender myself.
 

JAPAN
 
          Saturday morning I arose early enough to get a reasonable start: I had to be on the Coromandel Peninsula by noon. At breakfast — a superb breakfast typical of our hosts at Rotorua Lodge — came big news: another Big One, this time not New Zealand, but several air-hours north on the Pacific Ring of Fire: Japan. The earthquake intensity was unbelievable: at 8.9 or 9.0, the most severe in modern times. But it wasn’t the earthquake that caused the most loss of life and catastrophe. A massive tsunami rose from the displacement of the ocean floor, crashing into the northeastern coast of Japan erasing whole towns before its unimaginable rush inland. I studied my car radio for reports of the disaster as I headed for Coromandel, a thumb of a peninsula jutting into the Pacific southeast of Auckland. My arrival time coincided with the projected arrival of any tsunami waves at this part of New Zealand. No one could predict how large the seismic wave might be, but Kiwis were warned not to go to the Pacific beaches this day. I chose a route that would get me as close as possible to the coast. I’d never seen a tidal wave and thought this a rare opportunity. Later when I saw video of the tsunami obliterating Japanese coastal towns I was glad I still have not encountered a tsunami. The 6-inch ripple of water from Japan that washed ashore along the Coromandel coast that day was strong enough to turn boats 90-degrees on their tethered harbor moorings, but caused no damage. Surfers and foolish tourists like me were disappointed.
 

PAUANUI TOWN ON TAIRUA HARBOUR, ON THE COROMANDEL PENINSULA, NEW ZEALAND, MARCH 12, 2011. SHOT FROM THE SUMMIT OF MT. PAKU, AND EXTINCT VOLCANO. WHEN THE JAPANESE TSUNAMI ARRIVED EARLIER THIS DAY AS A WAVE OF LESS THAN 1-FOOT, IT TURNED THE BOATS IN THE HARBOR 90 DEGREES ON THEIR MOORINGS. FOR A LARGER, PANORAMIC VIEW OF THIS SCENE WITH THE OCEAN, CLICK HERE.
Photo © Home At First. 
 

          After a night on the COROMANDEL PENINSULA I headed north on a long drive to Northland, the northernmost region of New Zealand. I kept the car radio on for the length of the journey, more amazed at each succeeding news report of the earthquake/tsunami in Japan. By the time I reached Maison Kerikeri, my destination in NORTHLAND, the news from Christchurch had been downgraded to the radio equivalent of page-3 journalism.

          Two days later and time to head for Auckland Airport and back home to winter in the Northeast of the USA. The drive down Highway 1 from Kerikeri to Auckland was uneventful, except for the radio reports about Japan, which now were ominously reporting problems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant complex on the tsunami coast. Each newscast painted a more frightening scene. More than 10,000 dead. Possibly 10% of Japan’s huge economy affected. An even darker future appears likely if the nuclear crisis worsens. Christchurch — the talk of talk radio during my first ten days in New Zealand — had now become yesterday’s news. I hadn’t forgotten. I remembered the refugees fleeing Christchurch I saw at Auckland Airport when I arrived. I remembered the stories of loved ones dead, missing, homeless, penniless, and ruined. I remembered families broken, and reunited, and the tears I saw. Japan’s Big One trumped Christchurch in scale and horror, but, so far, it has not wounded its society more than the ongoing page-3 nightmare in Canterbury.

MARCH 14, 2011: PAIHIA ON THE BAY OF ISLANDS IN NEW ZEALAND'S NORTHLAND REGION. ALL OF THIS BEAUTY STRADDLES
THE PACIFIC RING OF FIRE. UNLIKE JAPAN — CONTENDING THIS DAY WITH AN ATOMIC POWER PLANT DAMAGED
BY ITS EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI — NEW ZEALAND IS A NUCLEAR-FREE ZONE.
Photo © Home At First.
 

WE ARE ALL KIWIS
 
         I arrived at Auckland Airport as the latest news report about Japan’s devastation concluded. The news was followed by a song that had been following me around New Zealand on the car radio. I turned in the rental car, checked in and started the long flight back to the States, unable to shake the song from my mind. The song was by a popular, proudly patriotic Kiwi pop band, November Zulu.
 
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Ron Fahnestock
Editor
 

To Donate to the 2011 Christchurch Earthquake Appeal:

• NEW ZEALAND RED CROSS: http://www.redcross.org.nz/donate.

• NEW ZEALAND SALVATION ARMY: http://www.salvationarmy.org.nz/giving-back/donate-online/disaster-appeals/canterbury-earthquake-appeal/.