A photograph of the earthquake-damaged Canterbury Provincial Chambers on Durham Street. The roof and upper walls of the Stone Chamber have collapsed, the masonry falling onto the footpath below. The building has been cordoned off with wire fencing.
A photograph of the earthquake-damaged Canterbury Provincial Chambers on Durham Street. The roof and upper walls of the Stone Chamber have collapsed, the masonry falling onto the footpath below. The building has been cordoned off with wire fencing.
A photograph of the rubble from earthquake-damaged buildings on Colombo, near the intersection of St Asaph Streets. A damaged vehicle is sitting on top of the rubble. Wire fencing has been placed across the street as a cordon.
A photograph of the rubble from earthquake-damaged buildings on Colombo, near the intersection of St Asaph Streets. A damaged vehicle is sitting on top of the rubble. Wire fencing has been placed across the street as a cordon.
A photograph of the earthquake damage to the Winnie Bagoes building on Gloucester Street. The top of the building has collapsed and fallen into the building. Bricks and other rubble have spilled onto the footpath and street in front.
A photograph of earthquake damage to the Cranmer Courts on the corner of Kilmore and Montreal Streets. Masonry and other rubble is sitting on the footpath in front. Wire fencing has been placed around the building as a cordon.
Damage to the Provincial Chambers building on Durham Street. The front wall has collapsed onto the street, bringing the roof down with it. Scaffolding that was placed around the building after the 4 September 2010 earthquake has also collapsed.
A police officer directing traffic on the intersection of Worcester and Montreal Streets shortly after the 22 February 2011 earthquake. People can be seen on either side of the street, attempting to exit town and make their way home.
A photograph of members of the Wellington Emergency Management Office filling out paperwork in Cowles Stadium on Papanui Road. The stadium was set up by Civil Defence as temporary accommodation for those displaced by the 4 September 2010 earthquake.
A photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Two tourists studying a map in the Botanic Gardens. Tourists are seen again in reasonable numbers in Christchurch. Some of the maps are not updated to reflect the changes since the earthquake".
A photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The Carlton Country Club at 1 Papanui Road in Merivale. This is the former site of the historic Carlton Hotel, built 1906, damaged by the earthquakes and demolished on 9 April 2011".
A photograph of a block of earthquake-damaged buildings on Manchester Street. The outer wall of the second storey has collapsed, the bricks and other rubble spilling onto the footpath. Several cars have been crushed by the falling rubble.
LCPL Ryan Dempsey, from the 3rd Catering and Supply Company, photographed in the NZ Army's decontamination area. The area was set up after the 22 February 2011 earthquake in order to decontaminate equipment used in Operation Christchurch Quake.
The inside of a tent set up in the Arts car park at the University of Canterbury after the 22 February 2011 earthquake. The tents were used as temporary lecture rooms while the buildings were being checked for damage.
A photograph of people at a school which was used as a Civil Defence Report Centre after the 22 February 2011 earthquake. Cordon tape has been slung from two picnic tables and from the posts of the veranda behind.
A photograph of an earthquake-damaged building on the corner of Montreal Street and Moorhouse Avenue. The top of the brick facade has crumbled onto the footpath below. Wire fencing has been placed around the building as a cordon.
A copy of the program for the screenings of Elizabeth Guthrey's film series 'Dancing Through Impermanent Spaces'. The films are a creative response to the earthquakes in Christchurch and were shown as part of the Christchurch Body Festival 2014.
Photos from Aotea Square during the two minutes' silence held around New Zealand on March 1, 2011 at 12.51pm File ref: CCL-2011-03-01-Earthquake-Silence-Auckland-staff-2 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries
The Christchurch earthquakes have highlighted the importance of low-damage structural systems for minimising the economic impacts caused by destructive earthquakes. Post-tensioned precast concrete walls have been shown to provide superior seismic resistance to conventional concrete construction by minimising structural damage and residual drifts through the use of a controlled rocking mechanism. The structural response of unbonded post-tensioned precast concrete wall systems, with and without additional energy dissipating elements, were investigated by means of pseudo-static cyclic, snap back and forced vibration testing with shake table testing to be completed. Two types of post-tensioned rocking wall system were investigated; a single unbonded post-tensioned precast concrete wall or Single Rocking Wall (SRW) and a system consisting of a Precast Wall with End Columns (PreWEC). The equivalent viscous damping (EVD) was evaluated using both the pseudo-static cyclic and snap back test data for all wall configurations. The PreWEC configurations showed an increase in EVD during the snap back tests in comparison to the cyclic test response. In contrast the SRW showed lower EVD during the snap back tests in comparison to the SRW cyclic test response. Despite residual drifts measured during the pseudo-static cyclic tests, negligible residual drift was measured following the snap back tests, highlighting the dynamic shake-down that occurs during the free vibration decay. Overall, the experimental tests provided definitive examples of the behaviour of posttensioned wall systems and validated their superior performance compared to reinforced concrete construction when subjected to large lateral drifts.
Tsunami events including the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami and the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami confirmed the need for Pacific-wide comprehensive risk mitigation and effective tsunami evacuation planning. New Zealand is highly exposed to tsunamis and continues to invest in tsunami risk awareness, readiness and response across the emergency management and science sectors. Evacuation is a vital risk reduction strategy for preventing tsunami casualties. Understanding how people respond to warnings and natural cues is an important element to improving evacuation modelling techniques. The relative rarity of tsunami events locally in Canterbury and also globally, means there is limited knowledge on tsunami evacuation behaviour, and tsunami evacuation planning has been largely informed by hurricane evacuations. This research aims to address this gap by analysing evacuation behaviour and movements of Kaikōura and Southshore/New Brighton (coastal suburb of Christchurch) residents following the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake. Stage 1 of the research is engaging with both these communities and relevant hazard management agencies, using a survey and community workshops to understand real-event evacuation behaviour during the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake and subsequent tsunami evacuations. The second stage is using the findings from stage 1 to inform an agent-based tsunami evacuation model, which is an approach that simulates of the movement of people during an evacuation response. This method improves on other evacuation modelling approaches to estimate evacuation times due to better representation of local population characteristics. The information provided by the communities will inform rules and interactions such as traffic congestion, evacuation delay times and routes taken to develop realistic tsunami evacuation models. This will allow emergency managers to more effectively prepare communities for future tsunami events, and will highlight recommended actions to increase the safety and efficiency of future tsunami evacuations.
The use of post-earthquake cordons as a tool to support emergency managers after an event has been documented around the world. However, there is limited research that attempts to understand the use, effectiveness, inherent complexities, impacts and subsequent consequences of cordoning once applied. This research aims to fill that gap by providing a detailed understanding of first, the cordons and associated processes, and their implications in a post-earthquake scenario. We use a qualitative method to understand cordons through case studies of two cities where it was used in different temporal and spatial scales: Christchurch (2011) and Wellington (Kaikōura earthquake 2016), New Zealand. Data was collected through 21 expert interviews obtained through purposive and snowball sampling of key informants who were directly or indirectly involved in a decision-making role and/or had influence in relation to the cordoning process. The participants were from varying backgrounds and roles i.e. emergency managers, council members, business representatives, insurance representatives, police and communication managers. The data was transcribed, coded in Nvivo and then grouped based on underlying themes and concepts and then analyzed inductively. It is found that cordons are used primarily as a tool to control access for the purpose of life safety and security. But cordons can also be adapted to support recovery. Broadly, it can be synthesized and viewed based on two key aspects, ‘decision-making’ and ‘operations and management’, which overlap and interact as part of a complex system. The underlying complexity arises in large part due to the multitude of sectors it transcends such as housing, socio-cultural requirements, economics, law, governance, insurance, evacuation, available resources etc. The complexity further increases as the duration of cordon is extended.
A video of a tractor on a farm near River Road in Lincoln. The tractor is making several passes over a liquefaction blister with a rotary hoe. This was one of several soil-remediation techniques tested on farms affected by the 4 September 2010 earthquake.
A video of a tractor on a farm near River Road in Lincoln. The tractor is making a second pass over a liquefaction blister with a power harrow. This was one of several soil-remediation techniques tested on farms affected by the 4 September 2010 earthquake.
A photograph of a statue lying on planks of wood outside the Canterbury Museum. The statue fell during the 22 February 2011 earthquake, and the head broke off. A message on the exposed neck reads, "My head is at Christ College".
An entry from Jennifer Middendorf's blog for 31 May 2013 entitled, "1000 days".
An entry from Jennifer Middendorf's blog for 30 October 2011 entitled, "Back in the CBD".
An entry from Jennifer Middendorf's blog for 22 February 2012 entitled, "12:51".
An entry from Jennifer Middendorf's blog for 24 February 2011 entitled, "Checking in".
A story submitted by Lin to the QuakeStories website.
A story submitted by Jeremy Ellen to the QuakeStories website.