Silver Award recipient, William William, who is originally from Jambi, Sumatra, Indonesia. Pictured here with Vice-Chancellor Dr Rod Carr, Prime Minister John Key and Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Gerry Brownlee.
People in Christchurch fighting to save their Port Hills homes are astounded the Earthquake Recovery Authority is set on spending millions of dollars to buy them out when a cheaper option exists.
Donations to the Canterbury earthquake fund now total about $11 million. It comes as the Government announced early details of a recovery plan for people wanting money to fix their damaged homes or start rebuilding.
Law experts have criticised the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Act for creating a dangerous precedent. Our political editor Brent Edwards weighs up the arguments for and against the emergency legislation.
The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Minister has been forced to concede he's received official advice on the Christchurch City Council selling some of its assets to help pay for rebuilding the city.
An entry from Ruth Gardner's blog for 11 June 2012 entitled, "Sobering Sunday Stroll".
Bronze award Hannah Duder on the left and Claire Laredo on the right. Pictured here with Vice-Chancellor Dr Rod Carr, Prime Minister John Key and Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Gerry Brownlee.
Silver Award Hamish Drake (second from the left) and Andrew Chalmers (middle). Pictured here with Vice-Chancellor Dr Rod Carr, Prime Minister John Key and Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Gerry Brownlee.
Gold Award recipient Sam Johnson (from Mayfield), Student Volunteer Army founder and leader. Pictured here with Vice-Chancellor Dr Rod Carr, Prime Minister John Key and Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Gerry Brownlee.
Silver Award recipients, Dean Manson (originally from Ashburton but studied in Christchurch). Pictured here with Vice-Chancellor Dr Rod Carr, Prime Minister John Key and Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Gerry Brownlee.
Cantabrians are still surrounded broken buildings and empty spaces on the 10th anniversary of the devastating 22 February 2011 Christchurch earthquake. The disaster forced 70 percent of the CBD to be demolished. The Government launched an ambitious recovery plan to help it recover in 2012. The Christchurch Central Recovery Plan, dubbed the "blueprint" would dictate the rebuild of the central city. To support it, the Government would complete a series of "anchor projects", to encourage investment in the city and make it a more attractive place to live in. As Anan Zaki reports, the anchor projects appeared to weigh down the progress of the rebuild.
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Christchurch begins the slow recovery process after last weeks devastating 7.1 earthquake. The historic MLC Building on Manchester Street is due for demolition. Manchester Courts".
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Christchurch begins the slow recovery process after last weeks devastating 7.1 earthquake. The historic MLC Building on Manchester Street is due for demolition. Manchester Courts".
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Christchurch begins the slow recovery process after last weeks devastating 7.1 earthquake. The historic MLC Building on Manchester Street is due for demolition. Manchester Courts".
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Christchurch begins the slow recovery process after last weeks devastating 7.1 earthquake. The historic MLC Building on Manchester Street is due for demolition. Manchester Courts".
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Christchurch begins the slow recovery process after last weeks devastating 7.1 earthquake. The historic MLC Building on Manchester Street is due for demolition. Manchester Courts".
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Christchurch begins the slow recovery process after last weeks devastating 7.1 earthquake. The historic MLC Building on Manchester Street is due for demolition. Manchester Courts".
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Christchurch begins the slow recovery process after last weeks devastating 7.1 earthquake. The historic MLC Building on Manchester Street is due for demolition. Manchester Courts".
The newly elected Christchurch City Council had its first meeting with the Earthquake Recovery Minister last night, and councillors say it was the beginning of a much better working relationship.
The 4 September, 22 February, and 13 June earthquakes experienced in Canterbury, New Zealand would have been significant events individually. Together they present a complex and unprecedented challenge for Canterbury and New Zealand. The repetitive and protracted nature of these events has caused widespread building and infrastructure damage, strained organisations’ financial and human resources and challenged insurer and investor confidence. The impact of the earthquakes was even more damaging coming in the wake of the worst worldwide recession since the great depression of the 1930s. However, where there is disruption there is also opportunity. Businesses and other organisations will drive the physical, economic and social recovery of Canterbury, which will be a dynamic and long-term undertaking. Ongoing monitoring of the impacts, challenges and developments during the recovery is critical to maintaining momentum and making effective mid-course adjustments. This report provides a synthesis of research carried out by the Resilient Organisations (ResOrgs) Research Programme1 at the University of Canterbury and Recover Canterbury in collaboration with Opus Central Laboratories (part of Opus International Consultants). The report includes discussions on the general state of the economy as well as data from three surveys (two conducted by ResOrgs and one by Recover Canterbury) on business impacts of the earthquakes, population movements and related economic recovery issues. This research and report offers two primary benefits:
In this paper we outline the process and outcomes of a multi-agency, multi-sector research collaboration, led by the Canterbury Earthquake Research Authority (CERA). The CERA Wellbeing Survey (CWS) is a serial, cross-sectional survey that is to be repeated six-monthly (in April and September) until the end of the CERA Act, in April 2016. The survey gathers self-reported wellbeing data to supplement the monitoring of the social recovery undertaken through CERA's Canterbury Wellbeing Index. Thereby informing a range of relevant agency decision-making, the CWS was also intended to provide the community and other sectors with a broad indication of how the population is tracking in the recovery. The primary objective was to ensure that decision-making was appropriately informed, with the concurrent aim of compiling a robust dataset that is of value to future researchers, and to the wider, global hazard and disaster research endeavor. The paper begins with an outline of both the Canterbury earthquake sequence, and the research context informing this collaborative project, before reporting on the methodology and significant results to date. It concludes with a discussion of both the survey results, and the collaborative process through which it was developed.
We examine the role of business interruption insurance in business recovery following the Christchurch earthquake in 2011 in the short- and medium-term. In the short-term analysis, we ask whether insurance increases the likelihood of business survival in the aftermath of a disaster. We find only weak evidence that those firms that had incurred damage, but were covered by business interruption insurance, had higher likelihood of survival post-quake compared with those firms that did not have insurance. This absence of evidence may reflect the high degree of uncertainty in the months following the 2011 earthquake and the multiplicity of severe aftershocks. For the medium-term, our results show a more explicit role for insurance in the aftermath of a disaster. Firms with business interruption insurance have a higher probability of increasing productivity and improved performance following a catastrophe. Furthermore, our results show that those organisations that receive prompt and full payments of their claims have a better recovery, in terms of profitability and a subjective ‘”better off” measure’ than those that had protracted or inadequate claim payments (less than 80% of the claim paid within 2.5 years). Interestingly, the latter group does worse than those organisations that had damage but no insurance coverage. This analysis strongly indicates the importance not only of good insurance coverage, but of an insurance system that also delivers prompt claim payments. As a first paper attempting to empirically identify a causal effect of insurance on business recovery, we also emphasize some caveats to our analysis.
An article from Army News, March 2011 titled, "Looking for Life Amidst the Rubble".
Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Gerry Brownlee, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Ian Town, Vice-Chancellor Dr Rod Carr, Prime Minister John Key, Mayor Bob Parker and and Roger Sutton from CERA at the Community Engagement Awards 2011.
Bronze award recipients, Jonathon Atkins (second to the left) and David Terry (middle), both from Christchurch. Pictured here with Prime Minister John Key, Vice-Chancellor Dr Rod Carr, and Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Gerry Brownlee.
The Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee says officials have tried for months to help the Christchurch City Council but it's consistently failed to make the necessary improvements and is still taking far too long to process applications.
Former editor of the Financial Times, and more recently was director general of the Confederation of British Industry, Sir Richard is New Zealand looking at earthquake recovery in Christchurch and to speak about climate change in a business context.
The Minister for Earthquake Recovery, Gerry Brownlee, has been accused in the High Court in Christchurch of abusing his powers and doing deals which allowed councils and Christchurch Airport to get their own way over zoning decisions.
The Christchurch City councillor in charge of council housing says he accepts trenchant criticism from the Earthquake Recovery Minister that the council has been woeful in fixing its quake-damaged housing stock.
The "Lyttelton Review" newsletter for 27 June 2011, produced by the Lyttelton Harbour Information Centre.