A dissertation submitted by Cameron McLeod in fulfilment of an Honours degree in Diplomacy, covering community response and recovery in Lyttelton following the Canterbury Earthquakes. Dissertation supervised by Dr Bronwyn Hayward, University of Canterbury School of Social and Political Sciences.
An entry from Deb Robertson's blog for 7 May 2013 entitled, "My Thoughts on the Rebuild of Christchurch".
New Zealand government website which acts as a gateway to central and local government resources, news and services pertinent to the Canterbury Earthquake.
The Government is promising the new authority set up to lead Christchurch's rebuilding will listen to local people.
Minister for Earthquake Recovery, Gerry Brownlee, responds to Christchurch residents in limbo awaiting a geotech report into which suburbs will be abandoned.
Recovery from disasters is a significant issue faced by all countries in the world at various times. Governments, including central and local governments, are the key actors regarding post-disaster recovery because they have the authority and responsibility to rescue affected people and recover affected areas (Yang, 2010). Planning is a critical step in the recovery process and provides the basis for defining a shared vision for recovery, clear objectives and intended results. Subsequently, the concept of collaborative planning and ‘build back better’ are highly desirable in recovery planning. However, in practice, these concepts are difficult to achieve. A brief description of the recovery planning in Christchurch City following the Canterbury earthquakes 2011 is provided as an example and comparison. This research aims to analyse the planning process to develop a post-disaster recovery plan in Indonesia using Mataram City’s recovery plan following the Lombok Earthquakes 2018 as the case study. It will emphasise on the roles of the central and local governments and whether they collaborate or not, and the implications of decentralisation for recovery planning. The methodology comprised a combination of legislation analysis and semi-structure interviews with the representatives of the central and local governments who were involved in the planning process. The results indicate that there was no collaboration between the central and local governments when developing the recovery plan, with the former tend to dominate and control the planning process. It is because there are regulatory and institutional problems concerning disaster management in Indonesia. In order to improve the implementation of disaster management and develop a better recovery plan, some recommendations are proposed. These include amendments the disaster management law and regulations to provide a clear guideline regarding the roles and responsibilities of both the central and local governments. It is also imperative to improve the capacity and capability of the local governments in managing disaster.
Slides from part one of the presentation by Dr Sonia Giovinazzi (Department of Civil and Natural Resouce Engineering) on "Recovery of Lifelines".
The chairman of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Commission, Murray Sherwin, joins us for the morning in our Wellington studio.
Meanwhile, the Government has made concessions on its Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority legislation after complaints from the Labour Party.
The Law Society is criticising the Government for rushing its Canterbury earthquake recovery legislation through Parliament under urgency.
The Earthquake Recovery Minister and the Insurance Council both deny that insurance companies pressured the Government to relax building guidelines in Canterbury.
Slides from part two of the presentation by Dr Sonia Giovinazzi (Department of Civil and Natural Resouce Engineering) on "Recovery of Lifelines".
A photograph of material from the Lyttelton Museum being stored at the Canterbury Cultural Recovery Centre.
A photograph of mannequins stacked in the storage shelves at the Canterbury Cultural Recovery Centre.
A photograph of a stuffed tortoise that is being stored at the Canterbury Cultural Recovery Centre.
A photograph of two lecterns and other furniture being stored at the Canterbury Cultural Recovery Centre.
Prime Minister, John Key, denies money is being held back from the Canterbury earthquake recovery to make the Government's books look better.
A video of a keynote presentation by Professor David Johnston, Senior Scientist at GNS Science, at the 2016 Seismics in the City Conference. The presentation is titled, "The Trajectory of Post-disaster Recovery and Regeneration: The social dimension".The abstract for the presentation reads, "A consideration of social regeneration and what that means for Canterbury moving forward plus current recovery trajectories and ways of measuring progress."
We measure the longer-term effect of a major earthquake on the local economy, using night-time light intensity measured from space, and investigate whether insurance claim payments for damaged residential property affected the local recovery process. We focus on the destructive Canterbury Earthquake Sequence (CES) 2010 -2011 as our case study. Uniquely for this event, more than 95% of residential housing units were covered by insurance, but insurance payments were staggered over 5 years, enabling us to identify their local impact. We find that night-time luminosity can capture the process of recovery and describe the recovery’s determinants. We also find that insurance payments contributed significantly to the process of economic recovery after the earthquake, but delayed payments were less affective and cash settlement of claims were more effective than insurance-managed repairs in contributing to local recovery.
A poster created by Empowered Christchurch to advertise their submission to the CERA Draft Transition Recovery Plan on social media.The poster reads, "Submission. CERA Draft Transition Recovery Plan. 5. In your opinion, is there a better way to report on these recovery issues? Looking at the recovery from the perspective of the eastern suburbs, it is impossible to avoid thinking of phenomenon referred to as 'Disaster Capitalism' and considering the aspects that have already become evident in the recovery process. Loss of equity and quality of life, risk transfer and other substantial shifts are taking place. We suggest that a regular mini-census should be conducted through the remainder of the recovery at intervals of 6-12 months to monitor deprivation, insurance cover (or lack of it), mortgage, home equity, and rental status. If unexpected changes identified, investigation and correction measures should be implemented. We need a city that is driven by the people that live in it, and enabled by a bureaucracy that accepts and mitigates risks, rather than transferring them to the most vulnerable residents ."
On November 14 2016 a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck the south island of New Zealand. The earthquake lasted for just two minutes with severe seismic shaking and damage in the Hurunui and Kaikōura districts. Although these are predominantly rural areas, with scattered small towns and mountainous topography, they also contain road and rail routes that are essential parts of the national transport infrastructure. This earthquake and the subsequent recovery are of particular significance as they represent a disaster following in close proximity to another similar disaster, with the Canterbury earthquakes occurring in a neighboring district five years earlier. The research used an inductive qualitative case study to explore the nature of the Kaikōura recovery. That recovery process involved a complex interplay between the three parties; (a) the existing local government in the district, (b) central government agencies funding the recovery of the local residents and the national transport infrastructure, and (c) recovery leaders arriving with recent expertise from the earlier Canterbury disaster. It was evident that three groups: locals, government, and experts represented a multi-party governance debate in which the control of the Kaikōura earthquake recovery was shared amongst them. Each party had their own expertise, adgenda and networks that they brought to the Kaikōura recovery, but this created tensions between external expertise and local, community leadership. Recent earthquake research suggests that New Zealand is currently in the midst of an earthquake cluster, with further seismic disasters likely to occur in relatively close succession. This is likely to be compounded by the increasing frequency of other natural disasters with the effects of climate change. The present study investigates a phenomenon that may become increasingly common, with the transfer of disaster expertise from one event to another, and the interface between those experts with local and national government in directing recoveries. The findings of this study have implications for practitioners and policy makers in NZ and other countries where disasters are experienced in close spatial and temporal proximity.
In response to the February 2011 earthquake, Parliament enacted the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Act. This emergency legislation provided the executive with extreme powers that extended well beyond the initial emergency response and into the recovery phase. Although New Zealand has the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002, it was unable to cope with the scale and intensity of the Canterbury earthquake sequence. Considering the well-known geological risk facing the Wellington region, this paper will consider whether a standalone “Disaster Recovery Act” should be established to separate an emergency and its response from the recovery phase. Currently, Government policy is to respond reactively to a disaster rather than proactively. In a major event, this typically involves the executive being given the ability to make rules, regulations and policy without the delay or oversight of normal legislative process. In the first part of this paper, I will canvas what a “Disaster Recovery Act” could prescribe and why there is a need to separate recovery from emergency. Secondly, I will consider the shortfalls in the current civil defence recovery framework which necessitates this kind of heavy governmental response after a disaster. In the final section, I will examine how
Christchurch residents are pouring cold water on the Earthquake Recovery Minister's efforts to celebrate post-quake recovery in the city.
The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Commission is promising swift changes following criticism of the rebuilding efforts necessitated by September's big quake.
State Services Commissioner Iain Rennie is helping to recruit the new head of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority.
Warwick Isaacs, the manager of demolitions for the Christchurch Earthquake Recovery Authority was in the red zone when the magnitude 6 quake struck.
A close-up photograph of mannequins stacked in the storage shelves at the Canterbury Cultural Recovery Centre.
A photograph of an inventory list of some of the items stored at the Canterbury Cultural Recovery Centre.
A close-up photograph of a stuffed penguin that is being stored at the Canterbury Cultural Recovery Centre.
Changes are on the way for the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority which from today becomes part of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.