Christchurch earthquake: Strength to lead city in the eye of a storm

Jo and Bob Parker know it will be a long road to recovery for the city. Photo / Getty Images

It's bathtime at the mayor's house. Bob Parker - once so slick and smooth in his days as a television host - is looking a lot more rugged and weatherbeaten these days.

Leading his city through New Zealand's worst natural disaster will do that to a man.

In their concrete-and-glass home overlooking south Hagley Park, he and his wife of 11 years, Jo Nicholls-Parker, boil up basins of hot water to clean off the dry, contaminated silt dust that has coated all of Christchurch this week.

"As you would when you go camping," Nicholls-Parker says.

It's an understated comparison. It presents the Christchurch earthquake as simply something to get through.

But it's that calmness that has seen the leadership of the Parkers take on a status not dissimilar to that of New York mayor Rudy Giuliani after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre.

The people of Christchurch don't need soaring rhetoric right now. They need calm reassurance.

And it is not just 58-year-old Bob Parker providing that leadership - it is his wife, too.

Since the first earthquake, six months ago, Nicholls-Parker has taken on a role more akin to a co-mayor than to a traditional mayoress.

You won't find her setting up cake stalls. You will find her working alongside her husband, 5am to midnight, with the army, the police, Urban Search and Rescue, inspecting the damage, hugging fearful relatives and planning the recovery.

Today she has just emerged from a meeting to discuss how police can escort busloads of CBD business proprietors back to their ruined premises to recover personal belongings and computer hard drives.

Nicholls-Parker is not a twinset-and-pearls kind of mayoress.

So, have they gone home and cried? "Personally, no," says Nicholls-Parker, 40.

"We haven't really stopped to release the emotion of the whole event.

"If you stop, relax, take it all in, it's not a comfortable place to be, so it's better to focus on what needs to be done today and now.

"Stepping into fear would be the wrong thing to do."

She knows Christchurch depends on her and her husband to stay strong.

And that's why, for 11 long days, the couple have answered every call to their mobile phones, spoken to every reporter and stood alongside every emergency worker.

For the first eight days, they had no power at their home, like so many other citizens.

They left the house before dawn and returned at midnight. Broken glass crunched underfoot as they collapsed, exhausted, into the chairs in their living room - their iPads and iPhones providing the only light in the dark room.

As the power returned, they were able to duck away for an hour, here or there, to clear the broken glass, to right the fallen furniture.

Their modern house was not structurally damaged.

An army major, Shane Ruane, has been helping the mayor these past days, almost like a high-ranked aide de camp.

"He looks after us," says Nicholls-Parker.

"He is well-trained, he knows how to get around the city and where we need to go."

The Parkers were both on the sixth floor of the new council building when the quake hit - Parker on a balcony high above the city, Nicholls-Parker in the office assigned to her as mayoress.

"This one started like the other," she recalls. "But then you realise this is getting really bad, and you see the doors falling off the cupboards and your computer hits the floor. I grabbed hold of my desk for dear life.

"My husband was on a balcony on the same floor - he stood up and tried to get inside.

"We both knew the new building had been built out 8m on a piece of steel, so it was probably best to get inside.

"He was heading inside but he couldn't - he got thrown on to a table and really hurt his ribs."

But he got up again. It was the start of what will be a long path to recovery for Christchurch and its mayor.

First, though, they had to get through the long day.

For much of the afternoon, Parker didn't know how his son, sister and parents had fared.

He eventually discovered their houses had been destroyed.

"His parents are 80-year-olds and they have got ruined lives like many in this city," Nicholls-Parker says.

"That is the reality, that is the real pain. These are people who were settled and had paid their dues in life. Now they have nothing."

That first night, she says, was awful: "There was no way you could sleep; you had to keep your eyes open because there were aftershocks every 15 minutes.

"Bob listens to talkback every night - he is a media guy from a long way back and it makes him relax.

"Four or five weeks after the first earthquake I thought, those voices are making me feel a little emotional, I can feel their pain.

"I have never said this to Bob in 11 years but I was contemplating saying, 'why don't we turn this down because I don't want to hear about any more pain'.

"But the voice is what people have. So now, I want that talkback on at night in bed."

She says her husband was emotional after marking the two minutes' silence this week. An old friend from TV One came up and gave him a long hug.

"He just didn't let go, you know. There is such real, raw emotion.

"We are not questioning our emotions or defying them - we are living in them at the moment. This city has history, it has a heart and we are looking after that right now as best we can."

In her black leather jacket and Italian leather boots, Nicholls-Parker pauses.

"I mean, you look out of the window and you see this carpark full of cars," she muses. "It's quite a new job for a parking attendant to work out what lives have been lost and what cars will never be picked up."