Everyone in Christchurch will remember exactly where they were a year ago today. Many in the rest of New Zealand will also recall what they were doing when the news came through. This time Christchurch had not dodged the bullet as it had the previous September when hitherto unknown faults under Canterbury began to rupture. This one had hit in daylight. Buildings had fallen with people inside and many more in the streets. It had been a sunny summer lunch hour.
It seems much more than a year ago. The city has endured thousands of aftershocks since and it is steeled for more. This, geologists assure us, is entirely normal. Haiti and Japan are still having aftershocks, Sumatra still has them from the quake that caused the Boxing Day tsunami eight years ago.
Christchurch comes to the first anniversary of its devastation in a mood of mounting frustration. There is nothing its people can do about the continuing shakes and not much rebuilding can be done until international insurance networks have assessed their risk. Public inquiries are under way into buildings that collapsed last February 22 and, as always, hindsight is wise.
It is perhaps to vent their frustration that citizens have turned on Mayor Bob Parker and the City Council, seizing on the routine hefty pay increase the council awarded its chief executive and despairing that divisions occur among its elected members. Yet the council is not the crucial agency for Christchurch's revival. That task was taken over by the Government long ago and delegated to a Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (Cera).
Cera and its chief executive Roger Sutton have yet to live up to the high hopes invested in them. Water pipes and sewerage have been fully repaired but roads are still waiting for attention. A corner of the inner city has been re-opened and shops and bars set up in shipping containers. But the rest of the city's heart remains a cordoned-off demolition yard and debate continues about whether the iconic cathedral can, or should, be restored.
