Chch council workers on standby incase of more flooding
Audio, Radio New Zealand
The Christchurch city council says today's flooding would have been much worse had it not been for post-earthquake upgrades to the storm water system.
The Christchurch city council says today's flooding would have been much worse had it not been for post-earthquake upgrades to the storm water system.
Some people in Christchurch who spent last night in freezing earthquake damaged homes with no power, are backing a call from the community group Cancern for emergency shelters to be set up when the next winter storm hits.
Shows a couple (representing the suburbs) under a large blue umbrella (representing the Christchurch Blueprint) in a rain storm. Refers to the blueprint for central Christchurch developed by the Christchurch Central Development Unit, which was unveiled on 30 July 2012. Quantity: 1 digital cartoon(s).
With many in Christchurch still living in earthquake damaged houses, the cold snap has prompted a call for temporary emergency shelters. Daphne Lewis-Mannix lives in a quake-damaged home in New Brighton. Her power was out last night, and she's been shivering overnight, already sick with a cold before the storm hit.
The Canterbury earthquake sequence in New Zealand’s South Island induced widespread liquefaction phenomena across the Christchurch urban area on four occasions (4 Sept 2010; 22 Feb; 13 June; 23 Dec 2011), that resulted in widespread ejection of silt and fine sand. This impacted transport networks as well as infiltrated and contaminated the damaged storm water system, making rapid clean-up an immediate post-earthquake priority. In some places the ejecta was contaminated by raw sewage and was readily remobilised in dry windy conditions, creating a long-term health risk to the population. Thousands of residential properties were inundated with liquefaction ejecta, however residents typically lacked the capacity (time or resources) to clean-up without external assistance. The liquefaction silt clean-up response was co-ordinated by the Christchurch City Council and executed by a network of contractors and volunteer groups, including the ‘Farmy-Army’ and the ‘Student-Army’. The duration of clean-up time of residential properties and the road network was approximately 2 months for each of the 3 main liquefaction inducing earthquakes; despite each event producing different volumes of ejecta. Preliminary cost estimates indicate total clean-up costs will be over NZ$25 million. Over 500,000 tonnes of ejecta has been stockpiled at Burwood landfill since the beginning of the Canterbury earthquakes sequence. The liquefaction clean-up experience in Christchurch following the 2010-2011 earthquake sequence has emerged as a valuable case study to support further analysis and research on the coordination, management and costs of large volume deposition of fine grained sediment in urban areas.