Post Script

Whenever I write, I'm reminded of the adage, "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead."*  It's just so easy to regurgitate facts and figures and so time-consuming to try and distill knowledge and wisdom.

I remarked on the unfathomable scale of the Christchurch earthquake, and yet I know it's actually quite small compared to other natural disasters. In terms of deaths, the 2010 Haiti earthquake killed 160,000 and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami killed almost a quarter million people.  In terms of magnitude, neither quake was in the top 40.  In terms of property damage, it ranks 7th on the list.

Closer to home, I was in Los Angeles for the 1994 Northridge quake, which was 6.7 magnitude (and 3rd on the list of costliest natural disasters).  The Richter scale is logarithmic, so a 7.0 earthquake is ten times bigger than a 6.0 earthquake (and releases about 31 times as much energy).  Thus, the Northridge quake was 5 times bigger than the Christchurch earthquake, but it was deeper, there was limited liquefaction and I suspect LA had higher building codes, so you had a lot of damage but not the same level of distraction.  (To be fair, LA has earthquakes about every 20 years, and is still poorly prepared.  Christchurch hadn't had a quake in 110 years before this one-two blow.)

Also, my dad was in the hospital, dying.  I can't remember which hospital now, but it was close to Northridge.  The day before the quake, the doctor had told us his kidneys were shutting down and he had about four days to live.  I got to tell him, just before he slipped into unconsciousness, that his house was destroyed.  So my experience and memory of the actual earthquake was a bit hazy.

It's been eight years since the quakes, and Christchurch is an amazing city.  That they decided to bulldoze all the properties, rather than leave them to rot, is a testament to their will.  That they have no idea what to do with the area is a damning statement on their vision.  That they have rebuilt much of the city, from the ground up, is incredible; that they have not addressed the mental toll is incredulous.  That they changed the building codes to ensure this never happens again is laudable; that they were so unprepared for it, living on the Ring of Fire, is laughable.

As always, it's easy to judge in hindsight, and difficult to see the future.  Christchurch drained the New Zealand economy: While the Northridge quake cost USD $49 billion, that's less than 1/4 of 1 percent of the US GDP.  The Christchurch quake cost USD $40 billion, but that's 20% of New Zealand's GDP!  Almost all improvement programs throughout New Zealand were put on hold while the Christchurch rebuild was underway.

There is a parallel in all of this: The 1931 Napier earthquake, a monster 7.8 magnitude that killed 256 people and virtually levelled the town.  As Wikipedia notes: "The earthquake prompted a thorough review of New Zealand building codes, which were found to be totally inadequate.... Building regulations established as a result of this event mean that to this day, there are only four buildings in Hawke's Bay taller than five storeys, and as most of the region's rebuilding took place in the 1930s when Art Deco was fashionable, Hawke's Bay architecture is regarded today as being one of the finest collections of Art Deco in the world."

That was a happy accident, and there is no such coherence in the Christchurch rebuild.  My feeling is that, like the LA rebuild, it was designed to take advantage of government money and get things done as quickly as possible, with no real thought to the future or vision of what Christchurch wanted to be.  (The LA freeways were rebuilt to the same specifications that caused them to collapse in the first place.)  That was a wasted opportunity, but probably a necessary compromise at the time. Even today, with vast stretches of abandoned land, it would be good for Christchurch to take a collective breath and figure out what it wants to be when it grows up. But I guess the same could be said of any city.

* It's not by Mark Twain: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/