Page 5 of Section A of the Christchurch edition of the Christchurch Press, published on Wednesday 1 August 2012.
Page 3 of Section A of the South Island edition of the Christchurch Press, published on Friday 12 August 2011.
Page 1 of Section A of the South Island edition of the Christchurch Press, published on Monday 18 July 2011.
Page 3 of Section A of the Christchurch Press, published on Thursday 8 March 2012.
Page 3 of Section A of the Christchurch Press, published on Tuesday 17 September 2013.
Page 5 of Section A of the Christchurch Press, published on Wednesday 27 March 2013.
Page 1 of Section A of the Christchurch Press, published on Thursday 9 January 2014.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPXqb7k4azU Details inside a half demolished theatre in central Christchurch. November, 2012. Christchurch, NZ. (c)Mike Brebner. All rights reserved.
Rolleston/Burnham, South Island, NZ This used to be a perfectly straight and flat road!
The performance of buildings in recent New Zealand earthquakes (Canterbury, Seddon and Kaikōura), delivered stark lessons on seismic resilience. Most of our buildings, with a few notable exceptions, performed as our Codes intended them to, that is, to safeguard people from injury. Many buildings only suffered minor structural damage but were unable to be reused and occupied for significant periods of time due to the damage and failure of non-structural elements. This resulted in substantial economic losses and major disruptions to our businesses and communities. Research has attributed the damage to poor overall design coordination, inadequate or lack of seismic restraints for non structural elements and insufficient clearances between building components to cater for the interaction of non structural elements under seismic actions. Investigations have found a clear connection between the poor performance of non-structural elements and the issues causing pain in the industry (procurement methods, risk aversion, the lack of clear understanding of design and inspection responsibility and the need for better alignment of the design codes to enable a consistent integrated design approach). The challenge to improve the seismic performance of non structural elements in New Zealand is a complex one that cuts across a diverse construction industry. Adopting the key steps as recommended in this paper is expected to have significant co-benefits to the New Zealand construction industry, with improvements in productivity alongside reductions in costs and waste, as the rework which plagues the industry decreases.
A photograph of the largest section of the Townsend Telescope recovered from the rubble of the Observatory tower. The telescope was housed in the tower at the Christchurch Arts Centre. It was severely damaged when the tower collapsed during the 22 February 2011 earthquake.
A close-up photograph of parts of the Townsend Telescope recovered from the rubble of the Observatory tower. The telescope was housed in the tower at the Christchurch Arts Centre. It was severely damaged when the tower collapsed during the 22 February 2011 earthquake.
A photograph of the earthquake damage to the second story of the Observatory tower at the Christchurch Arts Centre. The front of the storey has collapsed, exposing the inside. A tarpaulin has been draped over the top and the roof of the building behind.
Inside the Christchurch City Council building someone wonders what that noise is. Outside a gigantic wave of 'public discontent' rushes towards them. Context: Relates to anger and a protest of 4000 people at what they see as poor performance by the City Council in dealing with earthquake issues. The final straw was the Council's decision on the advice of its consultants to award the Council Chief Executive Tony Marryatt a $68,000 14% pay rise mid December 2011. Quantity: 1 digital cartoon(s).
Pumice materials, which are problematic from an engineering viewpoint, are widespread in the central part of the North Island. Considering the impacts of the 2010-2011 Christchurch earthquakes, a clear understanding of their properties under earthquake loading is necessary. For example, the 1987 Edgecumbe earthquake showed evidence of localised liquefaction of sands of volcanic origin. To elucidate on this, research was undertaken to investigate whether existing empirical field-based methods to evaluate the liquefaction potential of sands, which were originally developed for hard-grained soils, are applicable to crushable pumice-rich deposits. For this purpose, two sites, one in Whakatane and another in Edgecumbe, were selected where the occurrence of liquefaction was reported following the Edgecumbe earthquake. Manifestations of soil liquefaction, such as sand boils and ejected materials, have been reported at both sites. Field tests, including cone penetration tests (CPT), shear-wave velocity profiling, and screw driving sounding (SDS) tests were performed at the sites. Then, considering estimated peak ground accelerations (PGAs) at the sites based on recorded motions and possible range of ground water table locations, liquefaction analysis was conducted at the sites using available empirical approaches. To clarify the results of the analysis, undisturbed soil samples were obtained at both sites to investigate the laboratory-derived cyclic resistance ratios and to compare with the field-estimated values. Research results clearly showed that these pumice-rich soils do not fit existing liquefaction assessment frameworks and alternate methods are necessary to characterise them.
Chief executive of the Christchurch City Council, Tony Marryatt, has announced he has turned down a controversial $68,000 pay rise. The pay rise is particularly controversial in the face of widespread hardship in Christchurch because of the earthquakes that began in September 2010 and continue still. Quantity: 1 digital cartoon(s).
An image from a Army News March 2011 article titled, "An Army Being Led to Win". The image shows Defence Force personnel during an operational tour of Lyttelton taken by Commander Joint Forces, Air Marshal Peter Stockwell and Chief of Army Tim Keating to view the aftermath of the Christchurch Earthquake. In the background, the HMNZS Canterbury can be seen.
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Members of the Red Cross civil defence response team and South Canterbury Police have been in Christchurch helping with the earthquake clean up. Pictured from left are Andy Todd, Ken Weavers and Anna Munro. They are doing welfare checks around the Tai Tapu area".
Topics - Jim Anderton says he still has a shot at winning Christchurch's Mayoralty - despite a swing in favour of incumbent Bob Parker and the Treasury predicts the Canterbury earthquake could knock nearly half percent off the country's economic growth rate in the three months to the end of September.
There's been widespread dismay at the decision not to prosecute anyone for the deaths of 115 people in the CTV building collapse during the 2011 Canterbury earthquake. Police say it was a tough decision - they wanted to hold someone to account but there simply wasn't the evidence to warrant a prosecution.
Strong aftershocks felt in Canterbury, Quake firms to seek government wage subsidy, More services, access to buildings being restored in Christchurch, Minister for Earthquake Recovery discusses plans, Heavy rain causes flooding and road closures in Lower North Island, Building codes minimised quake's injuries and damage, Glass supply freezes as Christchurch companies clean up.
Thousands of people are making insurance claims after heavy rain and flooding in the north of New Zealand, especially in Auckland. Insurance lawyer Peter Woods has worked on property claims for earthquake damage in Canterbury and Marlborough.. He has also been an Independent Specialist Adviser to the government. Peter talks to Lisa Owen.
A video capturing an aftershock from the Canterbury earthquake on 13 June 2011, 2:20 pm. A strong shake after lunch time caused Ben Post to set up his camera in his workplace, capturing this aftershock. The camera is mounted on a small sturdy tripod on top of a table with wheels.
A plane flies into the distance. Attached to it by a rope is a large package containing Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker and CEO of the City Council Tony Marryatt. The package is addressed 'Deepest Siberia c/- isolated hellhole Russia'. The mayor looks on the bright side considering this to be a junket the people will approve of. Context: Public disapproval of the Mayor's two-week tour of Asian countries with a Christchurch International Airport-led delegation. The airport is paying for the mayoral couple to take part in the trip. There is public criticism that the trip take place at this time because of ongoing problems with the council and earthquake recovery. There is also criticism of Tony Marryatt's $68,000 pay increase considered poor form when so many people are struggling with earthquake related problems. Quantity: 1 digital cartoon(s).
Overview of SeisFinder SeisFinder is an open-source web service developed by QuakeCoRE and the University of Canterbury, focused on enabling the extraction of output data from computationally intensive earthquake resilience calculations. Currently, SeisFinder allows users to select historical or future events and retrieve ground motion simulation outputs for requested geographical locations. This data can be used as input for other resilience calculations, such as dynamic response history analysis. SeisFinder was developed using Django, a high-level python web framework, and uses a postgreSQL database. Because our large-scale computationally-intensive numerical ground motion simulations produce big data, the actual data is stored in file systems, while the metadata is stored in the database. The basic SeisFinder architecture is shown in Figure 1.
A photograph of a section of road lying on the Greendale Fault line which has cracked due to the 4 September 2010 earthquake. In the distance, police tape and cones have been used to close off the road.
A photograph of people examining a section of road lying on the Greendale Fault line which has large cracks caused by the 4 September 2010 earthquake. Police tape and cones have been used to close off the road.
A photograph of the earthquake damage to a church in Christchurch. The gable and top of the side wall have crumbled, and the bricks have fallen onto the pavement below. Police tape has been draped around the building.
A photograph of people examining a section of road lying on the Greendale Fault line which has large cracks caused by the 4 September 2010 earthquake. Police tape and cones have been used to close off the road.
A photograph of people examining a section of road lying on the Greendale Fault line which has large cracks caused by the 4 September 2010 earthquake. Police tape and cones have been used to close off the road.