‘How many people were surveyed?’ Jason asked.
‘Nearly 700,’ Lindsay said. ‘So quite a decent chunk. Apparently there’s ten thousand in our situation, on TC3 land who need new foundations.’
Jason asked what was going on with their claim, and Lindsay explained that they had their scope of works – the house would be lifted and the foundations replaced – now they just had to wait for the geotechnical work to be carried out.
‘But there’s only a couple of rigs to do the drilling for the whole city, 10,000 sites, so we probably won’t hear anything until the end of the year.’
‘Well at least you know what’s going to happen,’ Jason said. ‘Not everyone does.’
‘And we’ve avoided being fletchered,’ Kevin said. ‘So we’re happy about that.’ Alice saw Lindsay shoot him a look that said to shut up, but he ignored it and ploughed onward. ‘I reckon that’s what would’ve happened to us if we’d gone ahead with the work they wanted to do last year,’ he continued. Alice felt Lindsay kick at him from under the table, but he ignored her. ‘I think those guys from Fletchers were here to do the September work, they hadn’t taken into account the damage from February. It would’ve gone ahead if we hadn’t been asking questions, and now we’d be in...’ Lindsay had kicked him again, hard enough to make him stop.
‘... our position,’ Heather finished.
Kevin’s face turned red. ‘Yeah. Though you didn’t have a scope from September then, so possibly yours is just shoddy scoping.’
‘I’ll get dessert,’ Alice said, getting up from the table.
‘Can you help me clear the table, Kev?’ Lindsay said, getting up and starting to stack the plates. Kevin got up and helped her, which resulted in a hushed conversation in the kitchen that Alice pretended not to listen to, consumed by getting the desserts out the fridge.
‘This is supposed to help them get their minds off what’s happened,’ Lindsay said, ‘not rehash the whole thing.’
‘We need to talk through it,’ Kevin said. ‘It’s complicated, they need to get their thoughts in order to decide what to do.’
Lindsay sighed and brushed her hair from her face. ‘But that doesn’t have to happen right now, does it?’
‘Look at them, Lin, they’re exhausted, we need to do something to help, even if it’s just talking it all through, listening.’
‘But...’
‘And I think it would be good for Jase and Carla to know what’s going on,’ Kevin said. ‘They’re so relieved to be out of the red zone that they’ve forgotten that this is still going on for a lot of people.’
Alice handed a stack of bowls to Kevin and a handful of spoons to Lindsay. ‘Right then,’ she said, pointedly. ‘Time for dessert, everyone can talk after.’
Once the dessert bowls were cleared, coffees and teas were served and the children were settled in front of a video. The adults started talking about Neil and Heather’s house. They were having trouble getting EQC’s attention because they had signed off on their repairs.
‘We had to sign to move back into the house,’ Neil said. ‘I only signed because they said we had three months to complain, and we’re well within the three months, but they don’t want a bar of it. Because we’ve signed off, even though we were railroaded into it. So I don’t know what to do.’
‘I’ve heard about that happening,’ Jason said. ‘And about people’s repairs being signed off by the contractors themselves.’
‘That’s dodgy,’ Kevin said. ‘Surely the police would be interested in something like that.’
‘They’d have to double the police force to investigate all the dodgy stuff going on in the city,’ Lindsay said.
‘What I want to know,’ Heather said, ‘is why we’re not hearing anything about this in the media, on TV. Surely it’s the sort of thing Fair Go should be picking up?’
‘Not going to get covered on TV,’ Alice said. She had been silent up until then and everyone turned and stared at her. ‘Look at who advertises, TVNZ isn’t going to shoot themselves in the foot by doing nasty stories on their advertisers.’
‘You heard this through that job of yours?’ Jason said.
Alice hadn’t wanted to say anything because she didn’t want her job being drawn into it, but there it was, she had said something without thinking and now she felt like her job was fair game. She was talking to some very stressed people, and she was finding it increasingly hard to go to work each day, wondering if she would be able to do anything to make their situation better. She couldn’t help but think of these people as being like her grandparents, paying their premiums for decades and yet not getting the response they had been promised. The rebuild was so slow to get going, it was hard to believe that it had already been two years since the first lot of damage was done.
‘Even if the media was listening,’ Neil said, ‘we wouldn’t go that route, we will not make a spectacle of our situation, at least we have a place to live. Give the attention to the people worse off than us, the ones who can’t stay in their homes.’
‘Dad,’ Lindsay said, ‘your repairs need repairs and you have a section you might one day be offered half the RV for. It doesn’t get much worse than that.’
‘We can still live in the place,’ Heather said. ‘It’s not like we’re paying a mortgage and rent like so many are. We’ll just keep plugging away on getting the repairs fixed, and as for the section, let’s see what the next month or so brings. There’s one man talking about taking court action over the fifty percent offers. Maybe if we end up red zoned, we can be part of that.’
‘Or at least keep an eye on it,’ Neil said. ‘See what happens.’
Everyone was quiet again. That decided, there seemed to be nothing else to talk about.
‘Nice to have the supermarket back,’ Lindsay said. Their local supermarket had been a rebuild after the February quake, so the closest supermarkets for the past year and a half had been in the city. ‘Would never have thought three years ago that a new supermarket could make me so happy.’
‘It is beautiful,’ said Heather. ‘That view of the hills is just so lovely.’
‘I’m just happy not to go to Moorhouse Ave any more,’ Alice said. ‘A bit depressing seeing the old railway station being ripped apart.’
‘Have to wonder,’ Kevin said, ‘it’s taking them so long to take that down, if it’s that strong, did it really need to be demolished?’
‘Don’t you remember?’ Heather said. ‘Gerry Brownlee wants all the old dungers gone!’
‘So stop carping about it,’ Lindsay said. ‘You big moaner, or we’ll settle your claim for fifty percent of its actual value.’
Everyone laughed, but half-heartedly. With the Minister for Earthquake Recovery so scathing of the people whose red zoned properties had been worst affected by the quakes, the future of the rebuild was far from shiny.
Mind the Gap
October 2012
The September 2010 quake occurred on the Greendale fault south of the small town of Darfield. During this quake, the fault did what faults famously do: it broke the surface, offsetting roads, fences and railway lines. The February 2011 quake, however, occurred on a different fault, one that did not break the surface, one running under the Port Hills south of the city. Although it left no surface scar, the February quake did deform the hills and surrounding land. The hills and the floor of the estuary were pushed up by the force of the quake, while some areas north of the estuary and in the east of the city sank by as much as fifteen centimetres.
Neither fault was known to exist before the Canterbury earthquake sequence began. In the months that followed the September and February quakes, scientists swarmed over the land, collecting as much information as they could about the network of hidden faults in the region. This wasn’t simple curiosity, but was an attempt to understand how at risk the region was, what faults lurked beneath the river gravels, building up tension, ready to rupture.
These investigations found that there was a poor
ly-formed connection between the two faults several kilometres underground. The Port Hills fault extended far enough west to almost touch the eastern end of the Greendale fault. This almost-touching point corresponded to an area that had become known as The Gap, the area near the satellite towns of Prebbleton, Rolleston and Lincoln. It was an area that tended to have a lot of aftershocks whenever there were quakes elsewhere in the region. Scientists theorised that if the September 2010 earthquake had run along the gap, rupturing the Port Hills fault, the quake generated would have been a 7.3 magnitude quake rather than the 7.1.
‘Is that much of a difference?’ Marjorie asked.
Alice was setting the table, telling her about something she had read recently. Andrew and his family were coming around for dinner and Alice had arrived early to help Marjorie with the cooking. Michelle and the children had been in Christchurch for the week, they were still living in Wanaka, but Andrew and Michelle’s house had been repaired, the number of quakes had dropped right off and Michelle had finally agreed to come back to Christchurch. Not right away, but at the start of 2013. The children would finish the school year in Wanaka.
The leg of lamb and vegetables were in the oven and more vegetables were on the stove.
‘It’s not just a little bit stronger than a 7.1,’ Alice said. ‘It’s twice the energy, so there would’ve been a lot more shaking, more damage.’
There was a knock at the door and Marjorie went through to the living room to open it. Alice would just knock and then come in, but the rest of the family always waited for the door to be opened for them. It was a formalism that Marjorie had been unable to train into the girl ever since she had stayed with her after the February earthquake. At first, she had minded, it was her own home after all, but she had become used to it from Alice, who seemed to want nothing from her other than to get to know her, to know the family’s history and to understand how she fit in.
It was Andrew and Michelle and their four children. Andrew leaned in and kissed Marjorie on the cheek.
‘Grandmother,’ he said.
‘Come in,’ she said, stepping away from the door. Andrew and Michelle stepped over the threshold and Michelle leaned in for the obligatory kiss on the cheek, holding off to one side a bowl that held a salad covered in clingfilm. Marjorie took the bowl from her and started walking through to the kitchen. The children spilled past the adults, pouring into the living room through to the kitchen beyond, where Alice scooped up the youngest, the girl, in her arms, kissing her on the forehead and squeezing her tight. Andrew and Michelle followed Marjorie through to the kitchen while Alice’s siblings told her what they had been up to.
It was a pleasant afternoon. Andrew’s children were well-behaved compared to some of her great-grandchildren and they never complained about vegetables or played around with their food. After dessert, Michelle and Alice cleared the table and filled the dishwasher while the children played outside and Marjorie and Andrew discussed business.
Marjorie’s rental properties that EQC had put overcap were still caught up in the assessment process with the insurance company, which Andrew was handling for her. He had received a scope of works back on one of them, plus an offer of settlement. She had a choice: let the insurance company carry out the repairs or take the money and organise the repairs herself. It was tempting to let the insurance company do the work, if there was more damage discovered, the risk would be theirs and they would bear the costs. If she organised for the work to be done and more damage was discovered, she – meaning Andrew – would be stuck negotiating with the insurance company for money to cover that new damage while work ground to a halt, her property sitting there earning no rent while the insurance company’s bureaucracy contemplated what to do. It was tempting to just let them get on with it. But the building industry had gone mad and there were rumours of poor quality work and good builders struggling to get work. Marjorie and Andrew decided that he would engage an engineer to do their own scope of works, that was the best way to ensure all the damage had been captured.
Then she moved on to the matter of properties she was interested in buying. Marjorie had bought three damaged properties in the last year. Tony had organised for minor repairs to be carried out and had then found tenants. Not a difficult job in a city that had lost thousands of houses, and she intended to buy up more of these as-is-where-is properties.
‘Next year, I expect TC3 properties will start to come onto the market,’ Marjorie said to Andrew. ‘I’m curious to see how much ground works will cost, do you know anyone?’
‘Shouldn’t you be slowing down, Grandmother?’ Andrew said. ‘TC3 land will require a lot of work to get them suitable to rebuild on. I think you’re better off sticking to TC2 and TC1 properties.’
‘Possibly,’ Marjorie said. ‘But I would like to know what’s involved.’
‘Fine,’ Andrew said. He seemed harried, but Marjorie knew he would never say no to her, he had always been eager to please his grandmother. ‘I’ll look into it on Monday, but I think it will be some time before it’s worth buying anything TC3, not with all the geotech work that still needs to be done.’
TC3 properties were those on the most liquefaction-prone land and if a TC3 property had foundation damage, a geotechnical investigation had to be carried out before replacement foundations could be designed and built. There was simply not enough equipment in the country to carry out this work quickly and EQC and geotechnical engineering companies were slowly working their way around the city, carrying out both shallow and deep investigations. Marjorie had seen a drilling rig on a nearby property, one near the river that had visible cracks in its ring foundation.
Michelle came back inside, carrying the girl, Mattie, who was rubbing her eyes. ‘She’s getting tired,’ she said. ‘It’s probably time to get her home.’
Andrew set about rounding up the other children and getting them to say their goodbyes. Alice left soon after, saying she would drop by later in the week, after work one night.
Marjorie was relieved to have the early finish to the evening. She had been in the habit of staying up late most of her adult life, but lately she was retiring as early as eight o’clock some nights. The family leaving early meant she didn’t have to let them know how tired she was, she didn’t want to be seen to be slowing down. She was still keeping up with the garden, but lately she had been thinking about getting someone in to take care of the housework. She didn’t want to ask one of her daughters, she would feel obligated to them, and she didn’t like to think about how they might try to collect on that obligation. Karen was a real estate agent and had made it clear that she wanted to be the one to sell any properties Marjorie decided to part with.
Before Alice had switched to the topic of the gap between the Greendale and Port Hills faults earlier that day, she had told Marjorie there were some in her family having problems with insurance and the stress of living in a broken city. It was difficult, Marjorie found the roads and always-changing detours gruelling. Until recently, she had driven into the city every Thursday to do her supermarket shopping, enduring the jarring roads, the diversions, the indignity of shopping at an inner city supermarket. Thankfully her local supermarket had reopened a few weeks ago, and Marjorie no longer had to worry about anchoring her handbag to her shopping trolley to prevent it being stolen.
Alice seemed overly concerned with her family’s mental health. Mental health was not a term Marjorie had heard of when she was young. She understood the concept of shell shock, after all she had grown up with it. Then, in the war, she had seen men fall apart from seeing too much of the horrors of war. She had lived in a city under siege and seen the neighbourhood she grew up in destroyed, her family home obliterated, and she had been just fine. But really, back then, most people just got on with it rather than having breakdowns. It was the weak ones who resorted to alcohol and violence, weak men like her father.
Her father had returned from the first world war and married a woman who had lost the man she truly l
oved. Marjorie was born soon after, and brothers and sisters followed, her fellow witnesses to her father’s rages, victims of his bullying. Nursing school had allowed her to escape as soon as she turned eighteen, and the others soon found their own ways out. Her parents were the only ones killed when the terrace was bombed.
For Marjorie, her family had died when Edward was killed, even though she still had another brother and two sisters. Before Marjorie left England, she would run into Gwen and Charlie occasionally, and they would ask if she had heard anything from Lizzie. Even if she had, she wouldn’t tell them, that would only result in her being drawn back into it all. When she, Bill and Suzanne left England for New Zealand, she saw no reason to get in touch and let them know. After all, they would only judge her for the expedient decision marrying Bill had been. Rather than risking her two worlds colliding and blowing her new one apart, she had told Bill that her whole family had been killed in the Blitz.
Lately, listening to Alice talk about her mother’s side of the family, Marjorie had thought more about Gwen, Charlie and Lizzie. They were all younger than her, they could still be alive. What had they made of themselves? Had their parents’ legacy dragged them down or motivated them, driven them to do anything but be like their parents? It had certainly motivated Marjorie. But there was a whole world between her and them, even if they were still alive, a gap that could not be bridged, not without shaking apart the life she had spent the last sixty years building. She wouldn’t let that happen. Instead, she would keep wondering, keep telling herself she had done the right thing by getting out of England, getting out of her family.
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