
Three years after the earthquakes robbed Christchurch of its chance to host England during the Rugby World Cup, the tourists finally made it onto a Canterbury field.
Christchurch builders are worried asbestos repairs in the earthquake rebuild will continue to cause problems for years to come.
Gerry Brownlee is the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Minister. Hugo Kristinsson is a South Brighton resident who stood for mayor last year on the issue of flood risk and land damage. David Stringer is the spokesperson for the community lobby group Insurance Watch - which has been seeking answers from the council since 2011 about the flood risk to the city. Nine to Noon speaks with all three about the recent flooding in Christchurch.
Following a disaster, an organisation’s ability to recover is influenced by its internal capacities, but also by the people, organisations, and places to which it is connected. Current approaches to organisational resilience tend to focus predominantly on an organization's internal capacities and do not adequately consider the place-based contexts and networks in which it is embedded. This thesis explores how organisations’ connections may both hinder and enable organisational resilience. Organisations in the Canterbury region of New Zealand experienced significant and repeated disruptions as a result of two major earthquakes and thousands of aftershocks throughout 2010 and 2011. This thesis draws upon 32 case studies of organisations located in three severely damaged town centres in Canterbury to assess the influence that organisations’ place-based connections and relational networks had on their post-earthquake trajectories. The research has four objectives: 1) to examine the ways organisations connected to their local contexts both before and after the earthquakes, 2) to explore the characteristics of the formal and informal networks organisations used to aid their response and recovery, 3) to identify the ways organisations’ connections to their local contexts and support networks influenced their ability to recover following the earthquakes, and finally, 4) to develop approaches to assess resilience that consider these extra-organisational connections. The thesis contests the fiction that organisations recover and adapt independently from their contexts following disasters. Although organisations have a set of internal capacities that enable their post-disaster recovery, they are embedded within external structures that constrain and enable their adaptive options following a disaster. An approach which considers organisations’ contexts and networks as potential sources of organisational resilience has both conceptual and practical value. Refining our understanding of the influence of extra-organisational connections can improve our ability to explain variability in organisational outcomes following disasters and foster new ways to develop and manage organisational resilience.
A rare glimpse of how Rutherford's Den and Christchurch's iconic Arts Centre are being restored after the earthquakes
An historic Christchurch clock tower damaged in the earthquakes was unveiled today, after undergoing more than eight hundred thousand dollars of repairs.
New research shows many Cantabrians are still struggling to cope with the after effects of the earthquakes.
A Christchurch resthome under stress after the earthquakes is being blamed for systemic failures that ended in a frail elderly woman dying.
Fifteen hundred people in Christchurch are without power tonight and more than a hundred homes evacuated after a 'once in a hundred year flood'.
A charitable trust which began after the earthquakes to create and maintain temporary public parks on cleared sites in Christchurch.
The EQC has got the green light to start settling the claims of thousands of Christchurch people whose homes became more at risk of flooding after the earthquakes.
Lyttelton singer-songwriter Adam McGrath talks about songwriting, free concerts after the Christchurch earthquakes, and lending his song - and its title - to TV mini-series Hope and Wire.
Our neighbours house during its "Deconstruction" yesterday... It has to be rebuilt after the Christchurch Earthquakes.
Peter Marshall is managing director of architectural firm Warren and Mahoney, part of the team selected to carry out the task of the redesign of Christchurch after the earthquakes.
A pdf copy of an email sent to the participants in a One Voice Te Reo Kotahi forum held on 10 March 2014. OVTRK report that the email was sent to Arihia Bennett, the Chief Executive Officer of Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, Christchurch Mayor Lianne Dalziel, Waimakariri Mayor David Ayers, Selwyn District Councillor Malcolm Lyall, and Dame Margaret Bazley, Chair of Environment Canterbury.
Professional and personal partners Victoria Flight and John Drew about the nutritional benefits of coconut oil, and the decision to develop their business 'Blue Coconut' after experiencing a deeply traumatic event in Christchurch's earthquake of February 2011.
Peter Marshall is managing director of architectural firm Warren and Mahoney, part of the team selected to carry out the task of the redesign of Christchurch after the earthquakes. (This version of the audio does not include music)
Documents obtained by Radio New Zealand show WorkSafe New Zealand was still grappling to get on top of asbestos dangers in the Christchurch rebuild nearly two years after the February 2011 earthquake.
A photograph of the former sites of several houses on Bangor Street. The houses were demolished after the land was zoned Red.
Christchurch and its surrounding towns are slowly starting to be rebuilt after the devastating earthquakes of 2010 and 2011. Our political editor Brent Edwards has been in Christchurch to find out whether the rebuild debate will dominate the election campaign in the city.
After a couple of weeks off from the blog, we thought it’d be a good idea to give you a run-down of what we learnt at French Farm. These are preliminary observations only, and could well change as we do … Continue reading →
A photograph of the footpath outside the former site of Donna Allfrey's house on Oxford Terrace. Allfrey's house was demolished after her land was zoned Red.
A photograph of the former site of Donna Allfrey's house at 406 Oxford Terrace. Allfrey's house was demolished after her land was zoned Red.
A photograph looking north along the footpath of Bangor Street. To the right there are the former sites of several houses. The houses were demolished after the land was zoned Red.
A photograph of the former site of Doug Sexton's house at 378 Oxford Terrace. Sexton's house was demolished after his land was zoned Red.
A photograph of the former site of Doug Sexton's house at 378 Oxford Terrace. Sexton's house was demolished after his land was zoned Red.
The 2010 and 2011 earthquakes in the region of Canterbury, New Zealand caused widespread damage and the deaths of 185 people. Suburbs on the eastern side of Christchurch and in the satellite town of Kaiapoi, 20 kilometres north of Christchurch, were badly damaged by liquefaction. The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA), a government organisation set up in the wake of the earthquakes, began to systematically zone all residential land in 2011. Based on the possibility for land remediation, 7860 houses in Christchurch and Kaiapoi were zoned red. Those who were in this zone were compensated and had to buy or build elsewhere. The other zone examined within this research – that of TC3 – lies within the green zone. Residents, in this zone, were able to stay in their houses but land was moderately damaged and required site-specific geotechnical investigations. This research sought to understand how residents’ senses of home were impacted by a disaster and the response efforts. Focusing on the TC3 and red zone of the eastern suburbs and the satellite town of Kaiapoi, this study interviewed 29 residents within these zones. The concept of home was explored with the respondents at three scales: home as a household; home as a community; and home as a city. There was a large amount of resistance to the zoning process and the handling of claims by insurance companies and the Earthquake Commission (EQC) after the earthquakes. Lack of transparency and communication, as well as extremely slow timelines were all documented as failings of these agencies. This research seeks to understand how participant’s sense of home changed on an individual level and how it was impacted by outside agencies. Homemaking techniques were also focused on showing that a changed sense of home will impact on how a person interacts with a space.
A photograph of the former site of Donna Allfrey's house at 406 Oxford Terrace. Allfrey's house was demolished after her land was zoned Red.
The Christchurch Art Gallery is on track to reopen late next year, almost five years after the most devastating of the city's earthquakes put it out of commission. One of the key players in this important next step is Dr Lara Strongman who is the gallery's new senior curator.
A photograph of the former site of Donna Allfrey's house at 406 Oxford Terrace, taken from the footpath in front. Allfrey's house was demolished after her land was zoned Red.