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Map of the site of Christchurch's new urban village

Map of the site. Click to see the map enlarged (PDF).

The Breathe Urban Village Project is taking shape in Christchurch, with the announcement of four finalists and three highly commended concepts, chosen from fifty-eight entries from New Zealand and around the world.

The brief was to develop a concept for a new urban village that provides a variety of medium-density housing and lifestyle choices. Sustainability, innovation and a strong sense of community are key ingredients.

Three New Zealand entrants made the final cut, with the fourth coming from Italy. Judges are Kevin McCloud from TV’s UK Grand Designs, architect Stuart Gardyne, Development Specialist Martin Udale, Kevin Simcock (Engineer), Di Lucas (Landscape Architect), Huia Reriti (Ngāi Tahu Architect). Youth are represented on the judging panel by Zea Harman.

Now the finalists have three months to fine-tune their designs, before judges select the winning concept, which will take shape near Christchurch’s Latimer Square in the heart of the CBD.

The goal of the urban village project as it sits with the overarching Christchurch Central Recovery Plan is to offer an inner city village feel with exceptional quality of life, multi-use parks, entertainment facilities, and shopping, all right next to the central business area. The winning projects had to reflect innovation, international best practice and aspirations of all those that may live and around the development.

Take a look at the range of designs, they’re inspiring.

Breathe urban village design competition Christchurch

Click on the image to see details of the Breathe Project and all the entries.

Source for this article: http://www.futurechristchurch.co.nz/breathe

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Canterbury people mark the second anniversary of the February 2011 earthquake today, with a midday service and other community events getting underway in Latimer Square. This area of the central business district was devastated by the 6.3-magnitude quake on 22 February 2011. Nearby, the Canterbury Television building (CTV) collapse resulted in the greatest single loss of life during the quake.

The civic service, which is co-hosted by Christchurch Cathedral, includes the laying of a wreath, readings and a minute’s silence at 12.51 pm, recalling the moment when the earthquake occurred.

The River of Flowers is expected to be a spectacular community event, with people invited to drop flowers into the Avon and Heathcote rivers and the estuary all through the day until 8 pm. People can leave messages on one of a number of Trees of Hope around the city and at the  Gap Filler-hosted space at the Pallet Pavilion near Victoria Square. Gap Filler’s aim is to bring people together to remember what has happened, but also to look towards the future and celebrate our resilience. No speeches, just cake, music and communityIn the evening, all the tables will be put together to form one long table to encourage people to come together on this day in the spirit of community. 

Speaking this morning on Radio New Zealand National, Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee remains upbeat about Canterbury’s future, two years after the destruction which left thousands of homes and businesses in ruins, and 185 dead. The Minister said that despite widespread concern that there would be unemployment and economic decline in the aftermath of the earthquake, ‘none of that has come to fruition’ (Radio New Zealand Morning Report, 22 Feb 2013). He suggested that Canterbury was in fact, leading New Zealand’s economic recovery, with 16,000 jobs created in Canterbury in the past 12 months.

This short video is a raw (but we think, not insensitive) look at the destruction left by the earthquake event two years ago today. It was shot by Logan McMillan and begins 1 minute after the earthquake struck.

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New proposals on earthquake-prone buildings are up for public consultation, with submissions due by 8th March, 2013. The Department of Building and Housing have created a short video to throw some light on the issues raised by the Canterbury earthquakes of 2010 and 2011. The current earthquake-prone buildings system is described, along with the proposed changes and the reasons for them.

Wellingtonians are invited to a briefing tomorrow to discuss the proposed changes. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, along with Wellington City Council, have organised the February 5 meeting in the Michael Fowler Centre.

The changes would mean that:

  • All commercial and multi-storey buildings must have a seismic capacity assessment within five years.
  • Owners of buildings assessed as earthquake-prone would then have up to 10 years to strengthen or demolish them.

The changes imply greater central government control over seismic issues, standards and assessments, than currently.

The vast majority of residential buildings are exempt from the earthquake-prone buildings system and views are sought on the Royal Commission’s recommendation to allow local authorities the power, on consultation with their communities, to enforce policies that would require certain hazardous elements on residential buildings to be dealt with in a specified time. Some elements of residential buildings, like unreinforced masonry chimneys, pose serious hazards in earthquakes. The Commission contends that local authorities should have power to manage this risk, in the context of their region’s seismic profile and the nature of their housing stock .

Make an online submission at dbh.govt.nz, where you can view the consultation document and explanatory video.

Check out The Royal Commission’s report covering earthquake-prone building policy http://canterbury.royalcommission.govt.nz/Final-Report—Part-Two (Volume 4). This was released on 7 December 2012. Note there are some key points of difference in the Royal Commission recommendations, compared with the MBIE review:

  • Residential buildings – individual local authorities to be able to require strengthening of hazardous elements in residential buildings (most residential buildings are not currently covered by the earthquake-prone building system).
  • Unreinforced masonry buildings – faster timeframes for assessment (within two years) and strengthening (within seven years). Higher strengthening levels (to 50 per cent of new building requirements) for certain parts of unreinforced masonry buildings (chimneys, parapets, ornaments and external walls).
  • Local authority powers – giving local authorities the option of requiring strengthening to be done faster and/or to higher levels than those set by central government, after consulting with communities.

Wellington public meeting, February 5, 7pm, the Michael Fowler Centre. 

Public consultation on the Government’s proposed changes closes on March 8, 2013.

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ShakeOut is happening at 9.26 am on September 26 this year.

What is ShakeOut? It’s a Ministry of Civil Defence initiative to draw everyone’s attention to earthquake preparedness. Right now, we have more than one million people registered to take part!

Are you registered for this NZ-wide earthquake drill? Further information is available on the Civil Defence website: http://www.getthru.govt.nz/web/GetThru.nsf

By registering for the ShakeOut, you will:

  • Be part of the largest-ever earthquake drill in New Zealand!
  • Help motivate others to Get Ready and Get Thru
  • Make sure you, your family and your co-workers know what to do when the next earthquake happens.

Essential details
• Date and time: Wednesday 26 September at 9.26 am
• Drill starts: 9.26am with air-horn blast, school bell ringing, radio siren (hear it here) or  whatever arranged (please, no fire alarms)
• Action to take: DROP, COVER and HOLD
• Drill ends: Air-horns or other agreed signal means the exercise is over.

Groups may wish to discuss potential further action, had this been a real event and not a drill. You can download an observer form and a post-drill workplace discussion sheet (PDF) from the Get Thru site, which might be useful for reflecting on what went well and what didn’t.

Thanks for getting on board 🙂

What would you do in a real earthquake? Here’s the Civil Defence advice:

Drop to the ground

Cover by getting under a sturdy desk or table

Hold on to it until the shaking stops.

  • If you are indoors, stay there until the shaking stops and you are sure it is safe to go outside.
  • If you are outdoors, find a clear spot away from buildings, trees, streetlights and power lines, then drop, cover and hold. Stay there until the shaking stops.
  • If you are driving, pull over to a clear location, stop and stay there with your seatbelt fastened until the shaking stops. Drive carefully and avoid bridges or ramps that might have been damaged.
  • If you are within a tsunami zone on the coast, then move inland or to higher ground as soon as possible.

Video

Kids know best video via Get Thru

A classroom of kiwi kids answer the question ‘what is an earthquake?’ then they show us how to DROP – COVER – HOLD

NZ Get Thru – kids know best YouTube

Related articles

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100 day blueprint for Christchurch Central (Boffa Miskell, July 2012)

Christchurch Central Recovery Plan

Achievable, full of potential, and ready to fly. The 100 day spatial blueprint for Christchurch’s recovery is out only three days past its ambitious due date. The blueprint, developed by NZ urban design specialists Boffa Miskell, describes a more compact, low-rise central city – a city of precincts, with strong connections to green spaces and to the river that runs through it. The blueprint envisions ‘a well-formed and vibrant city centre that produces economic and social benefits by bringing people together for business, cultural or social activities’.

About 840 properties are to be bought from owners by the government, so that key facilities can go where they are needed. The old Turners & Growers site, on the edge of the CBD’s eastern precincts has been chosen for a new a covered stadium to replace the earthquake-damaged AMI Stadium. It will seat 35,000 people. A 2000 seat convention centre is also part of the plan, as is increasing the density of dwellings in the inner heart of the CBD, to accommodate 20,000 people. A massive children’s play park will be one of the riverside amenities expected to be fast-tracked to draw people back into the heart of Christchurch. The plan has been founded on a set of goals:

See the blueprint at http://static.stuff.co.nz/files/christchurch-central-recovery-plan.pdf

A Vision for Christchurch Central Recovery

  • greater productivity
  • connectedness
  • development of human capital
  • sharing of ideas and
  • a shared identity
  • reflecting heritage

5.5 billion dollars has been set aside by government for implementing the Christchurch recovery plan, which Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Minister, Gerry Brownlee says, will set it apart from any other urban centre. Seventy per cent of buildings in Christchurch’s centre have been under demolition in the wake of the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes, with 80 percent of them insured. Insurers have an obligation to pay to reinstate what was damaged, and there may be a gap between what is paid out, and the actual cost of rebuilding. However, there is reason to be optimistic regarding the affordability of the blue print, and the potential for investor capital to flow back into the city, suggests Chamber of Commerce CEO, Peter Townsend. It is just a plan. We have to make it work, and we will, he told Radio NZ National.

Christchurch Central Development Unit director Warwick Isaccs called the blueprint ‘bold and innovative’. He said that the blueprint was important to lift the confidence of investors, as much as residents. While the stadium might take ten years to complete, Mr Isaccs suggested that within three years, people could expect to see good progress on the proposed river park and the ‘green frame’ around the city. Integrating the river into the fabric of the city will be at the top of the list, Mr Townsend  indicated.

Christchurch Central Recovery Plan - lower buildings will become a defining feature of the central city

Lower buildings will become a defining feature of the central city in the medium term

Christchurch Central Recovery Plan - The Frame

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Former Government Buildings, Wellington. Photo: Robyn Moore

This, the former Government Buildings and the largest wooden building in the southern hemisphere, is mostly kauri – and not on the earthquake-prone register. It was painstakingly restored to former strength and resilience in the mid-1990s. Now the home of Victoria University’s Law School, Wellington. Photo: Robyn Moore

An interesting outcome from Stuff’s opinion poll (February 17 to 22, 2012) on the Wellington region’s earthquake preparedness. A Council report has identified more than 430 earthquake-prone buildings with un-reinforced masonry in Wellington city. It finds that these at-risk buildings are mainly located along strategic routes, compounding already identified issues of accessibility for lifeline and emergency services, in the event of a big earthquake in Wellington.

An earthquake-prone building is defined in government regulations
as a building with strength that is one-third or less than that required
for a new building on that site. This level is currently set by the seismic
loading standard (NZS 1170.5: 2004 – and see this IPENZ report). Wellington City Council’s Earthquake-prone Buildings Policy outlines how earthquake-prone buildings are identified and the timing allowed for property owners to either strengthen or demolish the building. In Wellington, the current policy applies to mainly commercial buildings and very few residential, as buildings used wholly or mainly for residential purposes are excluded, unless containing three or more household units and two or more storeys. The March 2012 list of Wellington’s earthquake-prone buildings, can be viewed here.

Here’s the Dompost story. And the Stuff opinion poll copied below.

How prepared is Wellington for a major quake?

Not prepared at all

5770 votes, 36.9%

Barely prepared

7407 votes, 47.3%

Reasonably prepared

2103 votes, 13.4%

Well prepared

366 votes, 2.3%

Total 15646 votes

Related news:

14 June 2012, Cost of the big one: $20b – In the event of a daytime fracturing of Wellington’s main active fault, at 7.6 magnitude, Wellington GNS’s new modelling software Risk Scape shows 600 buildings would suffer serious damage, with hundreds of people killed or injured and 29,000 displaced. Clean up costs could reach $20 billion (Dom Post/Stuff.co.nz).

7 June 2012, Wellington City Council rates will fund repair work on the following heritage buildings (Stuff.co.nz):

  • 1 Rintoul St, corner Riddiford St – $20,000 to assist in “heritage considerations” as part of seismic strengthening work.
  • The Jaycee Building in Willis St – $12,500 for seismic work to help bring walls and stairwells up to building standards.
  • Courtenay Place’s Adelphi Finance building – $18,750 to help preserve heritage values on the facade while strengthening work is done.
  • Strengthening work at 130 Riddiford St in Newtown – $10,000.
  • The Morgan Building in Cuba St – $18,000 to aid soundness and weather protection for heritage values during quake-strengthening work.
  • Buildings at 3A-3C Moxham Ave in Hataitai – $10,000 for strengthening and to help “ensure public safety and protect a main transport route”.
  • The building at 12 A and B Constable St in Newtown – $12,500 for strengthening work.
  • Wellington Downtown Backpackers at 1 Bunny St – $15,000 for infill masonry work to strengthen the building.

30 May 2012, ACC and IRD have made a hurried departure from their at-risk buildings, while GWRC staff are due to vacate their ‘brittle’ 1980s building opposite the Michael Fowler Centre.

31 March 2012, Demand for quake-safe properties – With more than 2000 Wellington office staff working in buildings that fail to meet even a third of the building standard for earthquake resilience, Colliers International say they are seeing a clear trend for businesses to move away from earthquake-prone buildings. People are looking for seismic integrity in their office space and while while there is, as yet, no earthquake grading system for buildings in the capital, Wellington City Council maintains a register of earthquake-prone buildings, which are less than 34 per cent of the building standard. Colliers’ Andrew Washington said that eliminating the earthquake-prone buildings on the council’s register would reduce the amount of net lettable space in the city by 60,000 square metres – the equivalent of eight rugby fields (Dom Post/Stuff.co.nz).

Photo: Robyn Moore

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Damage to shop front Christchurch, February 2011. Image Robyn Moore

  • 7 August 2013, First night at Christchurch’s cardboard cathedral – The opening of the new cardboard cathedral was celebrated last night, with the first of 10 performances by the Christchurch City Choir,as part of the Joyfully Un-Munted Festival. The $5.3 million temporary cathedral can host 700 people and has been built to last 50 years.
  • 29 July 2013, Emergency architecture – Christchurch’s cardboard cathedral – The Cardboard Cathedral is a significant rebuild project for the CBD, and as the name suggests, the structure is substantially cardboard – a world first. The Transitional Cathedral temporarily replaces the original badly damaged Cathedral in Latimer Square.
  • 26 July 2013, Court of Appeal rules on Cathedral’s fate  – TVNZ news story on the Court’s decision to allow the iconic cathedral to be demolished and rebuilt, without obligation to replicate the original.
  • 21 July 2013, Two severe earthquakes strike central New Zealand – damage to Wellington and Eastern Marlborough
  • 1 March 2013, Christchurch Urban Village Project finalists chosen  – The four finalists of the Breathe – Urban Village Project competition were announced in Christchurch last night by Building and Construction Minister Maurice Williamson.Village greens, vege gardens and vibrant laneways are among the features presented by entrants. (The Press – stuff.co.nz)
  • 22 February 2013, Canterbury marks two years since quake  Hundreds turn out to the official ceremony in Christchurch, marking the second anniversary of the February 2011 earthquake (Radio NZ National)
  • 22 February 2013, Live – Christchurch quake second anniversary – Photo gallery: Two years on from Christchurch’s disastrous earthquake, remembering those lost and looking to the future (stuff.co.nz)
  • 1 February 2013, Wellingtonians invited to briefing on policy changes around earthquake prone buildings – 5th February meeting at Michael Fowler Centre. Public consultation on the Government’s proposed changes closes 8 March. Submissions to dbh.govt.nz
  • 24 January 2013, Earthquake prone building threshold should remain at current level – says Wellington Chamber of Commerce (wecc.org.nz)
  • 20 December 2012, Zoning decision appeal lost – Minister Brownlee acted unlawfully in use of powers when he should have ‘reasonably considered alternatives’ – ruling upheld by Court of Appeal (nzherald.co.nz)
  • 13 November 2012, Kapiti and Hutt out in front on emergency preparedness (stuff.co.nz)
  • 11 November 2012, Most of 158 buildings unlikely to be in CTV league – Govt (radionz.co.nz)
  • 11 November 2012, EQC welcomes admission of false insurance claims (radionz.co.nz)
  • 10 November 2012, Christchurch earthquake archive of news and images from NZ Herald (nzherald.co.nz)
  • 8 November 2012, Red-zone clearance to accelerate next year (stuff.co.nz)
  • 4 November 2012, Archbishop of Canterbury stunned by Christchurch damage (nzherald.co.nz)
  • 4 September 2012, Being the best at preparing for the worst (stuff.co.nz)
  • 1 August 2012, Christchurch Press – Christchurch businesses forced out of the central city after the February 2011 earthquake are queuing up to return. Several key tenants, including law firm Duncan Cotterill with 120 staff, have said they are keen to shift their workforces back as new office space becomes available.
  • 30 July 2012, Stuff – Rebuild plan for Christchurch unveiled 
  • 20 July 2012, Wellington City Council News –  a collaborative project is underway, which will see architecture students from Victoria University come up with design concepts for the seismic upgrade of buildings on Cuba Street. Wellington City Council and the New Zealand Historic Places Trust are supporting the project. 
  • 14 June 2012, Radio NZ National  The Earthquake Commission (EQC) has secured another year of reinsurance cover, for all of New Zealand, with a 50% higher price tag, a smaller increase than the last. Reinsurance is a major issue for the commission, as it is for private insurers. The fund was at $6 billion before the Canterbury earthquakes, and with costs estimated to reach $12.5 billion, there is a shortfall to deal with. Insurance covers most of this, while taxpayers will contribute close to $1.5 billion. New Zealand is unique in its coverage of land value. Hear EQC boss Ian Simpson talking with Kathryn Ryan on Nine to Noon
  • April 30 2012, CERA News – three months extension for Red zone property owners – update from Roger Sutton.  With some 4200 people having accepted the Crown offer, the Government and CERA are offering an extension to assist those who have yet to decide on which of the two options is best for their situation. Option 1 has the Crown purchase the property based on the most recent rating valuation for land, buildings and fixtures, taking over all insurance claims for damage. In Option 2, the Crown buys the property at its most recent land rating valuation, thus taking over the EQC claim for land damage only – property owners will need to deal with EQC and their private insurer to settle claims for damage to their buildings and fixtures
  • March 30 2012, EQC News – On a global scale, what we’re doing is right up there. Hurricane Katrina in the United States in 2005 was the costliest natural disasters in history, resulting in roughly the same number of insurance claims as the number we have received from our customers. – EQC Chief Exec Ian Simpson commenting on the news that $3 billion has been paid out to claimants, of a total $12 billion liability (690,000 claims) – making the Canterbury EQ the second costliest insured disaster in history, close on the heels of Hurricane Katrina 
  • March 23 2012, CERA News – more homes in red zone – 251 Avon river border properties re-zoned from orange to red
  • March 23 2012, My Property updated – search your address to find the land zone and technical category that applies to your Canterbury property 
  • March 22 2012, Ziln TV News – NZ Herald – Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee and Labour MP/affected Christchurch Resident Lianne Dalziel – supplementary questions on red zone decisions
  • March 2 2012, Business Day – Christchurch CBD red zone – more time needed
  • March 2 2012, Stuff – Christ Church Cathedral’s fate decided
  • February 17 2012, Stuff – a council report into Wellington’s resilience finds the city’s economy would take a near $40 billion hit, should it suffer an event like the Christchurch earthquake. Some key businesses and services – including government – may vacate Wellington permanently. Costs to strengthen private un-reinforced buildings to comply with the building code (and create a safer city) are estimated at half a billion dollars. Read more
  • February 17 2012, CERA News – Riccarton Road building under cordon, as structural integrity is investigated.
  • February 10 2012, CERA News – Residential zoning changes announced by Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Minister. Gerry Brownlee – “CERA progress is nothing short of commendable.” Cera’s Roger Sutton – “Positive things going on in the community” – “like Gapfiller’s bicycle-powered cinema” (see cinema cycle-power in action on YouTube)…Brownlee suggested he’s “coming back for the slow-motion films…” Also, insurance workshops are up and running and “universally useful.” See the briefing on YouTube CERA media briefing 10 February – Roger Sutton and Gerry Brownlee
  • February 4 2012, Radio NZ News – The official death toll of the February earthquake has risen to 184, after a ruling by the Chief Coroner that the deaths of three elderly women were the result of complications from quake injuries
  • February 4 2012, Radio NZ News – Two new grants from Red Cross, for people still being affected by the Christchurch quakes.
  • February 4 2012, The Press “Police investigate Bexley burglaries” – Thieves have targeted chattels in red-zoned homes being demolished.
  • February 1 2012, Rebuild Christchurch – Christchurch company, Fabrum Solutions, has secured a major international contract to supply parts for a drilling product designed in Timaru.
  • January 27 2012, CERA News Cantabrians are reminded to have their say on how they want to rebuild Christchurch’s city centre” – Property and business owners, tenants and customers can give CERA their feedback online at www.centralcitystudy.org.nz. The survey aims to capture property owners’ and users’ intentions so CERA can help government and Council to action the Draft Christchurch Central City Plan. Survey results are to be presented to CERA in February.
  • January 19 2012, NZ HeraldCoke puts $29m into quake-hit ChristchurchCoca-Cola Amatil, stationery firmOfficeMax and SOE Meridian Energy – all making significant investments in the city since the quakes.
  • January 15 2012, Stuff “Quakes push up estuary bed” – Overall, the bed has risen by 14cm, shrinking the area of the estuary covered by water by around 50 hectares”
  • January 15 2012, The PressDisrupted sleep anyone? – The fourth 5.0 plus magnitude quake to shake ChCh this year – no reports of damage or injury
  • January 13 2012, Stuff Christchurch City pupils achieve best NCEA results” 
  • January 13 2012, The Star – Canterbury Cera’s CEO Roger Sutton talks about the recent swarm of aftershocks and responds to some (outside) commentators”
  • January 11 2012, Rebuild Christchurch “New grant for Canterbury businesses” Posted by RecoverCanterbury
  • January 11 2012, Stuff Christchurch, one of NZ’s most exciting cities – Lonely Planet” What to do in Christchurch? – your post-quake guide
  • January 10 2012Healthy Christchurch “22 February 2012 Commemorative events now confirmed”
  • December 31 2011, Geonet “NZ Earthquake Report – Magnitude 4.8, Saturday, December 31 2011 at 1:44 pm (NZDT), 10 km east of Christchurch”
  • December 24 2011, Rebuild Christchurch “Rebuild Christchurch – Civil Defence Update Number 6” Posted in CERA/Govt , Christchurch City CouncilRecent Quakes
  • December 21 2011, www.cera.govt.nz/support-and-assistance “Information on Support Services – ranging from counselling services to assistance with temporary accommodation for those whose homes are not currently habitable”
  • December 21 2011, CERA “Update from Roger Sutton, Chief Executive”
  • December 3 2011, Herald Sun “Wellington, South Island rocked by quake” (heraldsun.com.au)
  • November 28 2011, Foreign Policy “16 Global Cities to Watch: From Singapore to Christchurch, the urban centers that are shaping the next century” – Photo essay rating Christchurch as a city with “a unique opportunity to rethink urban form”
  • October 23 2011, The CEISMIC Project “Digital archive of people’s earthquake experiences officially launched”
  • October 19 2011, Stuff “Just 45 minutes away from Armageddon – Allan Freeth”
  • October 18 2011, Stuff “Rotary Forum – Bollard says Wellington can learn from Canterbury quakes”
  • December 15 2011, NZ Herald “Building up to another construction boom”
  • October 19 2011, NZ Herald “Bollard highlights costs of safety”
  • October 18 2011, Businessweek “NZ quake rebuild to stoke growth, inflation – Alan Bollard”
  • October 10 2011, Scoop “Seismic risk raises major questions for Wellington – Rotary and VUW hosting seismic risk conference”
  • June 6 2011, Wellington City Council News “Civil Defence Volunteers numbers swell” – 53 civil defence volunteers graduate in Wellington Wednesday 8 June. Mayor – Wellington vastly better prepared than a year ago
  • March 4 2011, Scoop “Press Release – Rotary helps earthquake victims in Christchurch”
  • February 23 2011, Stuff “Christchurch Quake (Feb 22) – first images”

Canterbury Earthquake – good information here:

Aftermath of September 4th Earthquake in Chris...

Image via Wikipedia

One Stop Shock – Earthquake recovery information sheet (PDF) from the good folk at healthychristchurch.org.nz. Print it and keep handy.

Radio NZ National

Canterburyearthquake.org.nz

Christchurch Earthquake (archive – no longer updated)

Rebuild Christchurch News Archive (regularly updated)

CERA News (Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority)

Civil Defence (New Zealand Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management www.civildefence.govt.nz)

For information on grants go to www.redcrosseqgrants.org.nz

Applications for the Independent Advice for Small Business grant (announced 11 Jan 2012) are available through Recover Canterbury.  A business wanting to apply for the grant can contact Recover Canterbury on 0800 50 50 96 or at www.recovercanterbury.co.nz.

Government Hotline for emergency assistance: 0800 779 997

For local emergencies: 111

Canterbury Earthquake Temporary Accommodation Service (CETAS): 0800 6732 27

Christchurch City Council customer services: 03 941 8999 – for help with essential council services like as water supply and sewage disposal.

Earthquake Commission (EQC): 0800 DAMAGE (0800 326 243) 
For information on EQC’s insurance cover, cleaning up and making a claim.

Links

Container shops Christchurch CBD open for Christmas trading 2011 - Image by Brett Atkinson, Lonely Planet
Related Articles (Themes of the Rotary Forum – thefaultlineforum.com)

Image via Richard Ballantyne

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Presenters: Glen Hughes (Chair), Allan FreethHelen AndersonMargaret Jefferies, Dave Middleton – Speakers are identified in bold type

Alan Bollard and Geoff Bascand contribute to this theme.

Theme 1 – Building resilience before the event (Download the PDF)

Getting the Get ready Get through message out there

'Start building resilience into your community today' - Margaret Jefferies, Project Lyttelton

Alan Bollard – The devastating nature of events in Christchurch has highlighted the importance of risk management and organisational preparedness. This is particularly true for Wellington, a capital city built on hills, flood plains and reclaimed land. Wellington overlooks a harbour connected to Cook Strait, and is bisected by a major active faultline at the intersection of the Indo-Australian and Pacific tectonic plates.

In the little more than a year since the first of the major earthquakes in Canterbury, we have seen these events produce highly complex and unforeseen outcomes. One of the least expected outcomes has been the long-lasting nature of the earthquakes through their associated aftershocks.

Image via Porirua EOCPlanning in the face of such uncertainty is a challenge. It is also vital – to ensure that our society is able to continue to function effectively in times of considerable disruption. From the perspective of the Reserve Bank for example, organisational preparedness means both business continuity considerations for the Bank itself, as well as working to maintain economic stability.

This section discusses:

  1. the impact of the Canterbury earthquakes on the economy, on people, and how organisations have responded;
  2. business continuity planning;
  3. the lessons from Canterbury that businesses and other organisations can apply in Wellington to build our resilience.
Main sources of NZ's earthquakes (thanks to GWRC for graphic)

Our geography matters very much - Dr Helen Anderson

Our geography matters very much in Wellington. Dr Helen Anderson describes the strongest shaking in Christchurch as like a bulls-eye – fairly regular. Ground shaking in Wellington is different – with strong shakes spread across Miramar, Lyall Bay, Petone, Lower Hutt, Wainuiomata, reclaimed areas and the CBD. The story is similar for tsunami hazards, especially for coastal and harbour areas. In Wellington, parts of the CBD and near the airport are vulnerable to a combining all of these hazards – with liquefaction, tsunamis and strong shaking also challenging in Petone and Wainuiomata.

New Zealand - geographically isolated

New Zealand is geographically, and economically, isolated. - Alan Bollard

New Zealand’s characteristics as a nation are important too. Being geographically and economically isolated, when significant challenges confront us, it may be with little external financial support. An event like a major earthquake has so many uncertainties, it can be difficult to plan crisis-responses in detail.

The focus for institutions should therefore be on lifting general preparedness, competency, leadership, delegation powers – building commercial and personal resilience, in preference to making detailed plans for specific situations, which may never be repeated.

The importance of business continuity planning (BCP) is stressed in this section on building resilience. Business Continuity Plans should focus on the needs and constraints that may follow a major event. How might your business’s ability to perform its operations be constrained? What are the immediate and not-so-immediate needs of your people? What are the necessary conditions for the business to perform its operations? Are you testing and updating your BCP and related systems regularly?

Location is a pressing issue in regard to planning for business continuity, with many Christchurch businesses forced to re-locate, sometimes more than once. Statistics NZ’s Geoff Bascand provides some insights on this in Leading people (Theme 3 of the Forum). What are the risks to your business if your place of business or your equipment suffers damage from a seismic event? What if your business is legally required to continue providing services? Alan Freeth from Telstra Clear offers some observations in the context of leading and managing during a ‘global level’ disaster.

Allan Freeth – Please hold the line caller, the earth is moving!

Telstra Clear call-centre damage

Nothing could have prepared us for the scale...but we were able to adapt quickly because of our plans and our practice - Allan Freeth, Telstra Clear

While later declared structurally sound, Telstra Clear’s Christchurch base and call-centre ended up in what was referred to as the Red Zone and sustained extensive interior damage, such that it was deemed inhabitable. It is still is unoccupied today.

We are forever grateful that our staff managed to simply walk away with just one or with sustaining minor injuries. It has only been in hindsight that we have understood how our history and our pedigree helped to make our response comparatively seamless and effective.

We have comprehensive disaster-recovery business continuity plans in place for a considerable number of events that could affect our extensive network and business operations.  We deal with disasters every week, sometimes every day. It could be rats chewing through fibres, fires, floods, even the odd drunk driving his or her car into our cabinets on the street.

So our structure, our crisis communication plans and our communications just swung into action and did what they did every week, every day, every month. However, nothing could have prepared us for the scale and the magnitude of the issues and concerns that we faced, but we were able to adapt very quickly because of our plans and our practice.

Damaged building Christchurch 2011 Image Steve Brazier Dept PM and Cabinet

If you don't have BC Plans, develop them and practice them - Allan Freeth

The first quake came as a practice run for the second, more tragic quake and we have learnt from it.  In accordance with our disciplines, we had just finished reviewing the project incident report on our first response to the quake.  We had not yet implemented the decisions when the second quake struck. So a lot of that was done real-time.

The second quake, like the first, was a multidimensional challenge that cut across many of our BR and BC plans. For the first time on any scale, we had to face the issues of the whereabouts, the safety and the wellbeing of our staff and their teams. By 11pm on the night of the second quake, through a combination of staff contact trees, mobile phone, internet and most importantly social media, we had accounted for all our staff and found them as far afield as Invercargill.

We differ from many businesses and organisations in that we have to abide by legislation that binds our service, with consequent obligations and responsibilities. That means our own disaster recovery is the least of our worries – because we are responsible for the disaster recovery of our customers as well. Unlike the message on the plane – put your own mask on before helping others – we are obliged to do both at the same time. And we were up against inconsistent, contradictory, incorrect information.

Telstra Clear’s Christchurch call-centre and engineering unit serves customers all around the country, with about 230 staff and about another 100 contractors there. Some 50,000 consumers and business in the region use our telecommunication services. We have literally hundreds of kilometres of fibre and HMC cable.

We had 80 cabinets in the affected areas that we were unable to get to. And with power outages affecting vast tracks in the city, the majority were running on battery, lasting anywhere from 3 hours to 3 days. We have several large and vital equipment sites in the city providing essential services. These are, among others, the NZ Defence Force, NZ Customs Service, MAF, Christchurch City Council, Civil Defence, Transpower, BNZ, Quantas – the list goes on. These sites have generators and large diesel tanks that can last from 1-3 days. At lunchtime on Friday 22nd the stopwatch was started on us, and we knew we were in trouble, because of the devastation reported.

Street cabinet failure we can live with, but loss of a major switch is Armageddon for us. Yes, we have contingency and redundancy plans for loss of power to a site, harm for employees, or damage to network operations, but I have to say we hadn’t envisioned dealing with all three at once without any information and then dealing immediately with the needs of our customers. The need for contradictory types of management became very clear – you had to be focussed, and strategic, at the same time.

The good news was that our network did not fail – it had been built well and it had been well-maintained. Parts of the network did lose power: Three hours is not a long time for cabinet batteries, so we were monitoring every cabinet. Barring thieves, and well-intentioned locals borrowing the generators, we kept the cabinets running.

In terms of critical sites, no amount of training or preparation would have been any use; this just became real-time crisis management. If we had lost one of the sites we would have lost almost the entire South Island and it would have taken days or weeks to restore it. By 7pm on the Friday following the second quake, we had just 45 minutes of fuel left for one generator. I was literally seconds away from picking up the phone to the beehive to get in touch with Bill English, when we finally got the agreement from Civil Defence to let us through the cordon to keep that generator going.

I don’t believe that Telstra Clear is any different or unique to other network businesses. We have resiliency in our DNA, but you can build resilience into your organisations.

The first step is accepting that an event will happen. Even when events happen every week – if on a different scale – we have people who greet those BR plans with scepticism and amusement, but not now. Secondly, you can build fiscal resiliency.  Before the second quake we had business customers who believed that our pledges to have systems diversity and backup network operations were expensive and unnecessary, and were simply a way for us to extract more money. Not anymore, though in some cases, memories are short.

We believed in the strength of our network design, in its capacity, resilience and diversity. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested into strengthening the Telstra Clear network. The quake proved this right. We are proud of the fact that we did not lose the network during either of the quakes, or since.

What have learnt?

We have learnt that BCPs must be based on reality. They must take account of basic human behaviours and they must assume the very worst. No power, no communications, no food, no water, and then once you have them, you may lose them again. We have learnt that nothing is normal in such a disaster. Plan and train – but ensure that your staff understand that they may have to improvise and think outside the norm to find resolutions.

We have learnt to keep leadership local wherever possible, but with clear boundaries and decision-making rights. We have learnt not only to be conscious of the need to swap out teams at the disaster, but to manage and swap out teams behind the scenes. At one point we had over 200 people backfilling the Christchurch team roles and this continued for some months.

We have learnt in times of emergency to communicate constantly and repeat messages over and over, and communicate with everyone.

If your executive team doesn’t have wide experience across your business, then develop a process where they can learn the job of the man or woman above, below and beside them.

If your organisation has business infrastructure or process weaknesses then identify them now and build redundancy while you can.

We have learnt that doing the impossible is doable. Smart people can find solutions, but sometimes, only in the face of the inevitable. My engineers told me there was no hope – that if we lost the generators at one particular critical site, we were done. I sent them away for an hour, with instructions to come back with an answer, and they did so.

We have learnt that preparation and training is essential. But, in the face of totally unexpected events – common sense, passion and intuition can take you a long way. Know your strengths and weaknesses. If you don’t have Business Continuity Plans, develop them and practice them.

Finally, always test the unthinkable. You can never fully be prepared for a disaster like Christchurch, but that is no excuse to not try.

Dr Helen Anderson describes building resilience in a particularly Wellington context, next.

Wellington has experienced major earthquakes and a destructive tsunami within the last 200 years and is likely to again. Christchurch has taught us that uncontrollable factors, such as time of day, have a dramatic impact on the loss of life, social disruption and the economy. Wellington unique geography will create localised areas of very different damage, such as on steep hills or reclaimed land.

I’m going to be slightly doomsday about Wellington…I think we need a wake-up call and if we don’t get it from Christchurch, I don’t know where on earth we’ll get it from.

Where our earthquakes come from, the major sources of earthquakes for Wellington, some particular aspects of Wellington’s geography, these affect our resilience and response, particularly in regard to the CBD.

There are obvious lessons for Wellington from the Christchurch CBD building collapses. Wellington has around 800 potentially earthquake prone buildings – potentially – as many are yet to be assessed. Wellington City Council assesses only those buildings built before 1976 – because it is assumed that 1976 onwards buildings are ‘safe’. Council is reviewing this assumption.

What is an earthquake-prone building? According to the definition in the Building Act (2004), it is something that is less than 33% of the new building standard. That is less than a third of what you would expect to build now.

In order to remove that earthquake prone status, an upgrade to just 34% or more is acceptable under the current rules. Notably, some of the buildings that completely collapsed in Christchurch would not have been identified as earthquake prone.

This raises a pressing issue – a building or other structure that is not described as earthquake-prone is not necessarily earthquake-proof.

Customers and citizens are demanding. They should demand much more reassurance about the safety of our buildings in our CBD. There are 800 potentially earthquake prone buildings on Wellington City Councils list, but that is the minimum. I would like to offer a suggestion: A new rating scheme for buildings – an earthquake rating symbol to be displayed outside Wellington buildings. So customers can make a clear and informed choice. Customers and citizens do need to know and be informed about the safety of our buildings.

We know that disaster preparedness is necessary and desirable, but not without cost. Improvements to seismic strengthening through increased safety standards are welcome. However, as Alan Bollard suggests, we also know that the significant costs, not to mention additional complexities in the regulatory environment, have the potential to impede activity. While there is a strong argument to prepare for low-frequency, high-impact events, there is a risk that doing so may be constraining in terms of activity and prohibitive in terms of costs. The assessment of such risks in New Zealand is complex, with work ongoing to more effectively quantify this.

Margaret Jefferies

Building resilience is about people and communities. Project Lyttelton is a shining example of what can be achieved with the power of community. Margaret Jefferies, Chair of Project Lyttelton takes up the narrative.

Now is the time. You could start building resilience into your community today! A resilient community will move more quickly through the ensuing chaos. But, to build resilience in a community you need to know one another so you can have easy conversations and work things out together.

Project Lyttelton uses a number of tools to strengthen its community and hence its resilience. These include: Appreciative Inquiry, Open Space, Time Banking and other money systems, community gardens, shared meals, festivals, farmers market, welcome bags, a newspaper, a newsletter, a website, electric cargo bikes, and most recently, a large food security project has received support, including Crown funding.

Now is the time to build resilience. Today we are talking about businesses and structures. But, you are all people, you all have families and it is important to start thinking about your community.

Lyttelton is over a faultline and was badly affected in February 2011. Yet, we’re quite a way ahead, compared to other affected communities – because we constantly address the idea of resilience and have built this sense of community. We know how to act and how to respond, to build resilience.

Wellington can be affected by many things, not just earthquakes – climate change, tsunamis, financial crisis, you could have the lot. We need to start thinking about how we work together in all of this – and start building resilience into our communities today.

So, what can you start doing today in your community to start building resilience? Start thinking not just of your organisation, but think of yourself, and your family and friends too, your community. Start getting to know them. What ideas do you have? Start thinking.

People tend to think it is someone up the chain who makes the decisions, but sometimes it is you who has to be the one to take the lead and make the decisions. What is it that you can offer? One woman I’d like to mention is a quilter. She started sewing on a street corner. People crave just to sit down and talk normally. So she sat down outside on the street, and she started sewing hearts. People sat down beside her. She stayed there for days – just sewing and giving away these hearts.

Would you think quilting would be related to earthquakes? It is about taking your individual skills and relating them. It’s about connecting too – what are the ideas buzzing in your head and whom are you going to connect with?

Dave Middleton chairs the Strategic Advisory Group representing users of natural hazard research, funded by the NZ government and others through the Natural Hazards Research Platform, and leads the steering group overseeing Canterbury University Project, Resilient Organisations. He wraps up this conversation on building resilience.

The resilience of organisations

In modern times, the large settlements that we now have the tendency to live in depend on complex and interlaced systems for normal functioning. When disaster strikes, they also rely on these systems for recovery and their survival.

Resilience measures how well prepared organisations, either individually or interdependently, are to withstand or recover from external shocks.

Yet, little has been done to measure organisational resilience or study how it can be improved. In 2004 a diverse group of researchers secured long-term funding from the Government to investigate resilience in New Zealand.  Recognising resilience as a practical matter, the research team included experts in transport engineering, construction and IT security, initially from the universities of Canterbury and Auckland.

The research programme was designed to assist New Zealand organisations to recover economic competitiveness after destructive events.

The longer the downtime, the less likely a business is to survive and at a tipping point of only a few weeks, many organisations are not able to survive at all.

There is also a national interest to focus on organisational resilience in recognition that it is organisations that manage, maintain and operate our infrastructure, create our economy and enable communities to return to normal. The concept of resilience for business is just as relevant for non-profit organisations as it is for-profit organisations.

Like Christchurch, the Wellington business scene is dominated by small to medium enterprises, which are shown to be more vulnerable than large businesses to major disruption. Bearing in mind that Wellington’s topology and possible isolation, some immediate issues may well reflect those in Christchurch CBD for service.

Some of the research recommendations are applicable to businesses outside the Canterbury area. Organisations should plan for supply chain robustness and duplication, identifying alternative suppliers is a valuable exercise. Mutual aid agreements or collaborations with other organisation to maintain critical supplies could be useful, planning, if a bit fraught, as some of these organisations will be competitors.There are examples in Christchurch of competitors becoming collaborators.

Tourism and marketing organisations should plan systems for marketing for the region post-disaster to counteract the expected customer-base erosion. As the reconstruction continues, road networks are likely to be disrupted, so long-term changes in these networks, such as decisions to delay repairing some of these roads down in Christchurch, are likely to have major impacts on some businesses. Up-to-date and accurate information on road network disruptions is needed by all businesses. An interest in plans and capabilities of other vital lifelines will serve businesses well – information, information, information – you can’t have too much.

The overall negative disposition of businesses to move back to the CBD within 18 months underlies the importance of decision-makers working collaboratively with businesses. The consultation process needs to go far beyond keeping businesses informed. Small businesses especially need to be engaged and empowered through the reconstruction process in order to improve and maintain investor confidence. Businesses should plan, and in the event strive, to become involved. Actively involved business groups are essential for a successful commercial recovery.

The commercial sector needs to support ongoing fact-finding and research in the recovery phase of several years to keep abreast of possibly rapidly changing factors. From the individual businessperson’s perspective there are some resilience fundamentals to attend to. An ability to survive and even prosper in the wake of disaster is dependent on the ability to get the right balance of planning and preparation on the one hand, and adaptability on the other.

Disasters throw up winners as well as losers. It is those organisations that have better planning and adaptive capacity balance that win out over their competitors.

Summary

To build resilience, for people, for organisations – there is work to do. Assume the worst, suggests Allan Freeth. Update your business continuity plans and practice them. Keep leadership local where possible, but have clear boundaries for decision-making. Share information. Demand information – Dr Helen Anderson cautions against being too accepting, when it comes to building safety, in particular.

National, as well as local action has been required in the case of the Christchurch earthquakes. Similarly, for other disasters: the Rena grounding in October 2011, Pike River in 2010. There is a need to prepare for and manage the effect of big national challenges and shocks from offshore, as much as the shocks that nature poses for us at home. Arguably, think global – act local is an overused phrase, but it applies.

Download the PDF Building resilience

Link

Presenters:  Donald Bell (Chair), Peter TownsendJacki Johnson Steve Brazier (did not present on the day)  , Bill Butzbach  with additional commentary from Alan Bollard and Roger Sutton. Speakers are identified in bold type.

Theme 2 – Restoring Confidence and Effectiveness Immediately after an Event (Download the PDF)

Response teams training together - Image Robyn MooreThe devastating impact of the Canterbury earthquake necessitated a large and coordinated response by central and local government, as well as private sector agencies. New Zealand was also fortunate enough to receive assistance from other nations during the disaster recovery period that followed the February earthquake.

Reserve Bank Wellington - Image by Robyn MooreAlan Bollard (Reserve Bank Governor) – One of the pressing concerns immediately following the earthquakes was the maintenance of payments systems. In the aftermath of events such as natural disasters, there is strong demand for food, water, petrol and other necessities. And with damage to power and telecommunications systems, access to cash is a key concern.

Only two hours after the February earthquake, the Reserve Bank started receiving orders from banks for more cash for delivery to Christchurch.

Ensuring cash was available required us to work closely with banks and Cash in Transit companies to meet the spike in demand. This task was complicated by damage to roads that meant travel, where possible in Christchurch, was taking about three times as long as normal.

Christchurch earthquake 2011 - Fact boxThe public also needed information about where cash was available. To ensure this, Bank staff used Google maps to provide a live feed of operational and accessible ATMs. Overall about $150 million of extra cash was sent to Christchurch in the week of the earthquake, representing about $350 per resident.

Earthquake-related expenditure estimated at $13.6 billion contributed to a marked deterioration in the Government’s operating deficit over the 2010/2011 year. The resulting pressure on the Government’s debt position was highlighted by Standard and Poor’s when they downgraded New Zealand’s long-term sovereign rating to ‘AA’ earlier this year. In response to the costs associated with the earthquakes, the Government’s June Budget incorporated an increased focus on fiscal consolidation with a reduction in new discretionary spending over the coming four years. In addition, the Government has recently announced an increase in the earthquake cover levy component of home insurance, to cover the costs faced by the EQC and to rebuild its Natural Disaster Fund.

We have also been researching how other countries have responded to similar earthquakes. Rapid recovery of communications infrastructure, speedy decisions on rebuild, and availability of finance, have led to rapid bounce-backs in industrial production, confidence and growth. Where the New Zealand situation looks most different is in the lingering seismic instability.

Earthquake damage on Worcester Street in Christchurch CBD

Donald Bell (Session Chair) is Territorial Commander for the Salvation Army.   

This session is focussed on the immediate aftermath. How do we react appropriately to an unexpected, catastrophic event? Almost everyone talks about the need to plan effectively in order to react effectively – and that is absolutely true. But two other aspects of the response in the immediate aftermath are also worthy of discussion.

  1. the actual event is not what was planned for, and
  2. if you haven’t planned, the plans aren’t available, or the people with the knowledge of the plans are not available, we realise that action is still required.

Action is often required that is not in the plan. This is sometimes described as ‘train, train, train – and in the face of unexpected events that were not what we trained for, exercise independent judgement.’ Exercising that judgement can require great skill, so there are important lessons here.

Peter Townsend is CEO for the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce. He talks about five issues relating to the topic,including loss of human and financial capital, delays, perceptions, and isolation.

I have ten minutes to talk about 30 billion dollars. For those of you who think it’s 20 billion, it’s not. It’s 30, and get used to it. Two words appropriate to my presentation are certainty and hope. Critical words as we go forward in Christchurch. To reinforce the size of the event for you: 1200 buildings destroyed, meaning if you want to renew and repair and replace over a 10 year period, you’ve got to open a new commercial building every three days, for the next 10 years.

1200 buildings in our city destroyed. 30,000 houses and in excess of $100,000 worth of damage to each. That’s equivalent to a town the size of Ashburton – destroyed – so we have to replace Ashburton in Christchurch. It’s estimated that will require 30,000 new people above business-as-usual, to help rebuild our city.

I want to focus on 5 key issues.

The first is capital flight, the risk of capital flight. We are the best insured city ever to have been struck by an earthquake of these proportions – this is the fourth most expensive earthquake in world history when it comes to insurance. It’s a double-edged sword – it’s great to have that insurance that comes in and can help us rebuild our city, but insurance means that we are very liquid. Cash is the ultimate liquidity and being liquid means that the cash can go anywhere. I’ve talked about capital flight, some of my colleagues talk about landing capital – we have to have a Christchurch where capital lands in the future because we don’t want to lose capital. We are going to be the recipients of 30,000 million dollars to replace a lot of lost equity in our household sector, our business sector, and our community, so we want to make sure that money sticks.

The second issue is the issue of human capital flight, of losing people. We haven’t lost many people in Christchurch, and I don’t think we will. When you consider 30,000 people are coming in to help rebuild Christchurch, we might have the opposite problem. We may have lost between 8 and 10 thousand people and some of those are coming back.

To give you an example, in Wanaka, the schools down there peaked at 367 kids immediately following the February earthquake, and that is now down to 100 kids from Christchurch still down in Wanaka. People come back.

There are many reasons people want to come back to Christchurch. One is that they love the city. It’s broken, but they love it. Their equity is in Christchurch, their house, their businesses. Their kids’ schools are there, their social networks are there. There are many reasons that people come back, so I am not anticipating too much human capital flight, but we need to be careful and we need to be accurate. There were reports that 30,000 have taken flight in the press not that long ago – that sort of information, we don’t need.

The third factor is delay. I describe delay as a cancer that eats away at recovery. The longer the delay, the more difficult it is to get back up. Delay from my perspective is an interaction between land stability, aftershocks, and insurance. At the moment we are into our 8,600th aftershock and they continue.  As long as they continue there is this dependency between land stability, aftershocks and insurance. I have sympathy for the insurance companies and the bind they find themselves in, gearing up for big payouts for reconstruction in the face of continuing seismic activity. It’s a massive, massive problem.

The fourth issue that I think is critical, is the perception that we will go back to where we came from. Christchurch is not going back where we came from. It is going somewhere else. We have 52,000 people inside our CBD. 6000 companies. Most of those have left the CBD and some of them will come back, but not all of them. Christchurch will be recreated as downtown Christchurch, and I use recreated wisely. We have a lot of different challenges and opportunities ahead of us.

The fifth issue is controversial and extremely important – the risk of isolation. It is the risk that because we are going through a 10-20 year recovery, the rest of the country gets on with doing their own thing, we concentrate on our recovery, and we run the risk of being in isolation over time. This is an issue of national significance and requires ongoing national support. The support we’ve had so far has been unbelievable. What worries me is that over time, the rest of the world will move on while we struggle. We have to make sure that does not happen.

So, we have these 5 key issues. We need to turn every one of these into opportunities.

I just want to touch on organisational resiliency in our city. It is unbelievably resilient. Of those members of the Canterbury Employers Chamber of Commerce, and there are 3000 members, 350 operating in the CBD, we have contacted them all since February 22nd and 90% are still in business.

The stories of resilience, the way they’ve changed their business models, their customer base, their supply chains, the way they have had to rebuild their business support systems, every one of those stories is a story of business heroism.

Something that I really want to reinforce is that the role of Recovery Canterbury, which was a joint venture between the Chamber of Commerce and the Canterbury Development Corporation. We set up a website, set up a call centre, put business recovery coordinators on the road to assist business, optimise business survival and success.

A critical issue was that of the employment subsidy scheme. Post-September, Bill English initiated the employment subsidy scheme after a conversation with myself, and we got 10.2 million dollars for 2,200 companies and 11,700 employees. After February 22nd, Bill English called me and said that I didn’t need to call, that they were gearing up the employment subsidy again. Post February 22nd, the Government pumped 200 million dollars into the Christchurch business community, binding the businesses and employees together and ensuring that the businesses can concentrate on things other than survival.  They can think about relocation, they can think about their markets, they can think about adapting their business models, they can think about renewing their supply chain.

It was a critical time and that 200 million dollars applied to 57,000 of our employees, 27% of our total workforce, and 50,000 companies. This money was pumped in on a high-trust basis immediately. It saved companies and it saved jobs. Fewer than 100 people ended up going on the dole, and Christchurch has lower employment rates than the rest of New Zealand, even in the face of the biggest natural disaster to ever hit our country. A lot of the credit for this has to go to the fact that these companies were able to have time, 8 weeks, to think about their options and not worry about their cash flow.

Jacki Johnson took up the role of Chief Executive Officer of IAG Insurance Group’s New Zealand business in November 2010. She discusses insurance in the context of organisational effectiveness.

Insurance is one of those areas that people don’t pay too much attention to until they really need it. It is often at this point, that it is too late to understand the product that has been purchased. I would also like to acknowledge my colleagues who are here today, and the way we have worked together with very difficult issues.

Firstly, I want to put insurance into context with the theme of today. The framework I encourage you to think about is as follows: Individuals and businesses need to understand their risk appetite – how much risk can they take and how much are they willing to take. Of course, this is very rational approach. What tends to happen is that people buy insurance on a price point and not with this active decision-making.

If it is true that the world is becoming a riskier place, then we need to make sure we help with active and informed decision-making.

To effectively manage insurance cover, an individual or business should be identifying and assessing their risks and then taking action to mitigate their risk. For example, this can be in the form of BCP, managing design-decisions or the OH&S of their people they employ, or their own health and safety.

One other key part is risk transfer. How much of the risk is transferred is dependent on the availability of cover, the risk appetite and affordability. I want to cover each of these with you. The immediate need, in addition to the obvious need of assisting people make their homes watertight and lodge claims was to ensure global capital remained to support our ongoing customers needs for insurance.

When an event is still going, it is normal practice to not offer renewal.

The local underwriters can only continue to provide support whilst they have cover from their re-insurers. We also had to work with reinsurers, with government and with Council to determine how the rebuild will occur.

The first priority is being accessible to customers - image via Jacki Johnson IAGAfter ensuring the safety and well-being of staff, the first priority in any major event is being accessible to your customers.  We mobilised employees from across IAG and had mobile vans out in the community.

When customers have no reliable phone communication and have immediate issues that need attending to, we need to respond.  We also need to go to a place that is convenient for them.

These situations are typically chaotic (at least in the early days) and full of complex issues.

You need to be able to work together across stakeholders – government, industry, cross industry and communities to find good long-term solutions. You need to work in a way that balances speed, initiative and good risk/safety management.

It is critical the shared future is designed and articulated across stakeholders.  This requires good relationships based on trust, and understanding each other’s perspectives. The following, more specific, imperatives that arose in Christchurch are testament to this.

For insurers to be able to write policies and renew policies, we require access to capital – both from investors and reinsurers. Insurance, although manufactured and distributed at a local level, really is about a global market of investment. Sharing the risk.  It is about ensuring there is enough capital to back up the promise. Too much aggregated risk is not good for an insurance model. Diversification helps to manage the long-term risk and accessibility of insurance.

As insurers, we need to engage in good risk management to be there for customers and economies. In that regard, the Global Reinsurance market is critical to us. Confidence must remain for Reinsurers and shareholders to invest in a market, and it is important to understand that the market here is linked to Australia and that Reinsurers see us as one part of the world.  What this means is a higher volatility from natural events and relatively small populations and markets – so we need to decrease volatility across other parts of our balance sheet – there needs to be confidence that government will make rational decisions and work with the industry. I am pleased to say this has been the case here in NZ. Government and insurers are making sure they are actively engaging with Global Reinsurers to ensure they understand the decisions and planning that are occurring.  Without access to global capital, we cannot restore confidence to households or local businesses.

Ensuring all parts of the insurance chain are adequately reserved, is critical for restoring confidence but a challenge in a small market. Many people expected insurers to be able to start repairing and rebuilding their homes immediately. Like what happens after major weather events.

Geological events are different – the event has not yet stopped and significant land damage has occurred. We have fixed some driveways up to 4 times!

Determining what land is safe to start building on, understanding the ongoing seismic risks, the building standards, the city plan, how Councils will give consents – all are key to us being able to start to rebuild people’s homes and businesses. That is not to say we haven’t started. A high proportion of assessments are now completed and the planning and resourcing has occurred.  We have also completed some rebuild activity, but it is not as fast as people would like, and our 570 staff based in Christchurch take the brunt of this. The next panel about Leading people, will deal with this particular topic .

The key thing to remember is that no matter how well you plan, events will overtake you.  Maintaining resilience and ensuring you see and adapt to emerging issues is critical.

I would like to give you some examples we are dealing with:

Clearly, a big challenge is the availability of affordable and building-ready land and the maintenance of communities and community support structures.  The issues of contract works and resultant cover is one of capacity and exposure.  It is particularly acute for developers looking to get ahead of demand. The absence of land cover from EQC during the build is an issue. However, we have committed to provide contracts of works cover to existing customers. At IAG, we are working to support our existing customers and making prudent decisions taking into account geo-technical, consent and planning information.

We also continue to work through the Insurance Council and Business NZ to ensure that the industry is able to play a positive role in the rebuild. Access to the CDB has been a long-standing issue – one I’m pleased to see has reduced over the months, as the industry and CERA have worked together to find solutions.

Concerns about recovery of stock and plant and the settlement of claims have been resolved through improved access. Concerns about demolition – in particular, notifications and differences in engineering assessments, have also improved markedly.  Our engineers and CERA engineers are largely on the same page, when it comes to assessment.  The ability to speed-up demolition remains a concern for business – we appreciate safety of workers must be paramount in decision-making. Speed of demolitions has improved of late.

The issue of depopulation and prevention has been an issue for business in and outside the cordon and will come to a head, as we approach the calculation of final settlements.  Once again, the uniqueness of the events in Christchurch has tested policy wording in ways not thought likely when they were first written. Business-interruption covered clients for losses resulting from property damage. But this does not extend to the wider impact of the quake, such as the general depopulation or economic downturn that often occurs following a widespread damage event. Businesses now understand that they need to be very familiar with what’s in their policy.  This extra scrutiny is a good thing for our industry – for brokers and insurers.

Finally, the key to ensuring confidence in a community through insurance is working together in a manner that builds trust and making sure your own people feel safe and supported. Without their resilience and commitment you cannot respond effectively to people in their time of need. A highly engaged workforce is most critical.

People creating a shared future based on trust and understanding each other's perspectives - Image via Jacki Johnson IAGWhat Natural Disasters do is give us the opportunity to work together in a way we do not normally have to. We identify issues at hand, but also minimise future risk, from what we learn. Without working together across countries, across businesses and across community stakeholders, we would never evolve and improve communities and economies. Thank you.

Bill Butzbach is Director, Strategic Development, NZ Fire Service. He presents some lessons for Wellington and Christchurch, including working together and keeping each other informed.

Our response comprised some 600 fire fighters, 400 of them volunteers, 150 New Zealand urban city and rescue personnel, and 150 support staff.

There’s actually a key lesson in that as well – we put our corporate staff out into a disaster zone and we made the assumption that they were going to be able to deal with that and of course it was so foreign for them. So we learnt a great deal about how we would respond in the future, just making sure that they were adequately prepared to work in that environment.

We were also able to roll out nine of the seventeen new dual-role hazmat/command vehicles. We’ve invested heavily in those over the past few years. There were fully trained staff on them 24/7 and it’s state of the art equipment. We were able to share this equipment with other agencies like the Police. The disaster and victim identification had a couple of them, and they were spread throughout the city for some time.  There was a lot of support required from our IT staff to ensure that the technology could keep going in such difficult circumstances.

This was a very significant local event, yet at the same time we had to wear the National Fire Service badge and ensure that business-as-usual was happening.

It was interesting that many people were wanting to self deploy – and we had to hold them back at some point.

I think the thing we needed to think about most carefully was who was sent down to Christchurch. Because sending too many down would overload the local infrastructure, which is probably something I wouldn’t have thought about previously – not enough places to sleep, not enough food and water about, so you have to be careful and maintain some balance.

There was a lot going on in the background, thinking about longer-term focus, and looking at rebuilding a city and identifying the role that your organisation is going to play in that.  That’s what my presentation is about today – working together for the benefit of Christchurch, looking to the future, what we can learn a great deal from – for the rest of New Zealand.

The feedback we got as an organisation is that the media coverage and how high-profile the organisation was, provided a sense of reassurance to the public, because it reminded them that something was being done. So that’s something to reflect on, how the media can be important in situations like these. While search and rescue dominated the media coverage in the news, there was a tremendous amount of brand activity that we needed the media for – to get key messages out. Because usual channels of communication were disrupted, no infrastructure, no facilities, no television, so a lot of the way in which we had to get key messages out in the community was face to face, just keeping people on the ground to talk to.

To get some insight into our business continuity at the front end of our fire service, this event certainly tested our BCP. From February 22 – 24 there was a real peak in demand, mostly rescues, sometimes people just wanting assistance. But as that initial demand dropped off until March 10, there was actually a wider community demand which to some degree overwhelmed us in the initial phases – they wanted support and information, so we had to adapt to that and think about things differently.

During that time, we responded to over 400 incidents, there were 70 live rescues from fire service personnel.

Fortunately, there was very little post-earthquake fire and that was probably attributable to the gas reticulation in Christchurch. In Wellington it will be a different matter. The likely scenario here is that we expect a lot of post-earthquake fires because of the nature of our building structures here, our gas reticulation system and other matters.

Our Southern Communication centres worked tremendously well on the day, and it was a test of our BCP to keep this network going. We’ve invested heavily over the past 6 years in technology to create a common database, common directory and radio network so that day we could switch off most of the operations in Christchurch and divert the calls to Wellington and it was business as usual. So we have a great deal of confidence in that infrastructure going forward.

We experienced a new demand, as a traditional fire service in Canterbury, because of Canterbury’s changing risk-profile. Obviously, there’s liquefaction. It’s a bit wet, but there are no utilities. So people are buying gas stoves and using them for heating, gas stoves that aren’t suitable for use inside, using candles, unfamiliar house layouts, overcrowding in houses, because there are a lot more people there than there usually would be. So this provided an extraordinarily high level of fire risk.

We got together with other agencies and used various networks to get key messages out there to the groups of people on the ground. We set up an 0800 number. A lot of the things we did in this area still continue to this day.

Some of the other work we’re involved in at a national level is working with the Department of Building and Housing to develop two temporary housing precincts. We have also been involved in basic design-specs, dealing with issues around fire fighting and rescue, that sort of thing.

The key lessons for our agency have been firstly, that earthquakes hit business and economies hard. They want to get up and running as soon as possible, so we need to be responsive to their needs and provide timely advice, including assisting building and business owners with regulatory compliance matters. The demand is different, the focus must shift quickly. In rebuilding, there are increased expectancies from a lot of agencies for us to be involved in strategic planning and in the longer term strategic issues and roles – and we are doing that. I think the big lessons are working together, keeping each other informed in what is now business as usual in Christchurch, and it should be the same here, in Wellington.

Geoff Bascand outlines the response of Statistics NZ.

How did we respond to the earthquakes? There were many practical responses. Yet the intangible care and support responses were most significant.

Initially, we executed our existing crisis management plans with daily crisis meetings, led by me, with the senior executive team, the corporate support manager and the general manager of the Christchurch office by phone.   Every meeting had an agenda of people-care and management matters, buildings/facilities issues, business activity/service delivery issues, and communication (internally and externally).

Following the September quake, key responses were prioritisation of business activity, reorganisation of office space to accommodate staff and re-planning the critical path for the census.  In this case, for operational matters, we largely utilised existing lines of responsibility, relying principally on the corporate services manager and the GM Christchurch.

Roger Sutton of CERA has the last word in this section – on insurance and confidence.

Insurance is the thing I think about when I wake up in the morning. This is not an event they expected to happen; we’d always expected some sort of event in Canterbury, we always expected it to be the Alpine fault, but they never expected a proper faultline to be right under a CBD.

So there is an awful lot of work we’re doing – talking to the insurers, to reassure them, and give them information, so they can start writing policies again and it’s also around trying to persuade them to start paying out to people. Insurance may become a major issue. At the moment it’s still only a few months since we had the last 6 magnitude quake. We have to give the insurers time to get their confidence back. We’ve worked hard to give them information to give them that confidence. It is confidence that is fundamental to making this recovery happen.

Download the PDF Restoring confidence and effectiveness

Click here for the draft recovery plan to rebuild Christchurch’s Central City.

Link

Presenters: Mayor Celia Wade-Brown (Chair), Geoff BascandCharles WaldegraveRichard BallantyneProfessor Bruce Glavovic, with additional insights from Allan Freeth. Speakers are identified in bold type.

Theme 3 – Leading people after the event (Download the PDF)

A disaster occurs when we have a natural hazard event, that exceeds the capacity of the people affected to cope, and they rely on outside support. Bruce Glavovic – Massey University

Presenting in the first session on Building resilience, some of the observations by Telstra Clear‘s Allan Freeth are relevant here. His commentary – on leadership and management challenges during a ‘global level’ disaster begins this section. The speakers’ insights and observations on Leadership through an event like earthquake continue in the order as written here: Geoff Bascand, Charles Waldegrave, Richard Ballantyne, Professor Bruce Glavovic.

Allan Freeth – Please hold the line caller – the earth is moving…

Telstra Clear is a complex, diverse technology networks business, and is an essential service for large corporates, Government departments, and thousands of residential customers.

Businesses plan for the situation of disaster recovery and management, with on-going business as usual demands. But, rarely do they experience it.

The title of my talk comes from one of our more politically correct staff in the call centre that was dealing with a customer when the second earthquake struck in February. As you can imagine there are a range of other recordings which I cannot repeat but all them make for compelling listening as you hear the screams of staff, the crashing of the roof falling, and the very heavy air-conditioning units crashing to the ground and onto the desks they were sheltering under.

A crucial part of our crisis incident team structure is always the leadership of the Senior Executive, leaving myself and others free to focus on the bigger issues and usual business operations. In the first quake, based on the shock of the magnitude of the event, I took control of the incident from day one. By the middle of the second day, I had realised my mistake and passed on responsibilities for the incident to my leadership team.

By Sunday evening, I had enough perspective to begin worrying about what we were going to do if a quake of that magnitude struck Wellington. By Tuesday morning, we had staff working on a contingency plan. The second earthquake was different – I assigned one of my executives to lead the response. However, we replaced the usual very open and central style decision-making structure of our crisis team with a much more streamlined, controlled structure with crucial, critical decision-making rights retained by myself or the executive. For example, if someone wanted to go to the Red Zone or enter our buildings they had to have my explicit, written approval to do so.

Other members of my leadership team were assigned immediately to set areas of action under our BR plans and were free from other responsibilities until the crisis ended.  One of the strengths of the Telstra Clear leadership team is that they have all held multiple positions either running the businesses or the support units.  This was also true of their ability step into each other’s shoes.

Also, from the first earthquake we had learnt three things. Firstly, command and control disciplines are hard to impose if you have been working under a different management style until that point. We learnt that people resent distant commands and by the time we were hit by the second quake, we had learnt to let local teams to approach challenges in their own way but with clear values of decision-making held centrally.

We learnt to control heroes. Heroes may do great things, but their actions can threaten their own safety and those of their colleagues, and can compromise the ability for you to gain control of the situation across the country.

In the first quake, I was forced in the face of local resistance to fresh bodies and minds, to deliver an ultimatum to our staff and I did it personally: I said they could either walk out the door and go home to their families with their jobs, or they could walk home without one. Either way, they were going to walk out that door and stand down.

Geoff Bascand from Statistics NZ describes the events around the decision to cancel the census. He had similar things to say about the effort to control heroes:

Last week marked a significant event for my Population Statistics team. It was their seventh consecutive week in one office location in Christchurch – the longest spell they have had in the one place since September 4 last year.

Three offices, five moves, 21 weeks working at home, and a number of weeks working in Wellington. Meanwhile, they completed 53 statistical releases largely to schedule, with an average delay of 21 days.

One five-yearly census cancelled, now rescheduled for March 2013. $72 million spent, 7500 people employed and then let go – and paid out. The quake of February 22, 2011 was exactly 14 days before Census day, March 8.

Given its enormous human and organisational impact, it is tempting to date the quake stories from that day, but in fact we have been recovering, responding and adapting from September 4 through June 13, onward. We still are, and still will be next year, and in years to come. We hope the Population Stats team have only one more move in front of them – back into our permanent building in March next year – but we have learnt that nothing is certain or to be counted upon.

We have also learned that we can work differently, that there is enormous resilience and innovative capability in the organisation, and that crises bring out the best in us!

The diversity of experiences continually challenged our management responses.  You simply cannot assume how people respond to crises and stress.  Some staff we expected to be unshakeable were traumatised and unable to work at times.  Others surprised us by stepping up way beyond our expectations.  I was torn when talking with managers by the need to support them personally, given significant damage and disruption they suffered themselves, and needing to rely on them to lead our recovery and support their staff.  It was very hard to know what we could ask for.  To not ask frustrated some as it made them feel we lacked trust or confidence in them.  I learned to ask but be prepared for any answer; through typically they were ‘yes’.

A few staff worked beyond acceptable levels and in a couple of cases suddenly needed time out.  In a few cases we had to insist on staff taking leave.

The organisation was hit hard in business terms by the three major quakes, but fortunately limited in direct personal physical injury. A number of staff lost family members and friends in February, while many of course lost homes – nearly all experienced some form of shock.

The September quake closed our main office Dollan House (near the corner of Bealey Avenue and Madras Street) for three working days, but rendered the third floor unsafe and unusable until December 17, when we temporarily resumed ‘business as usual’. Our recently installed emergency generator proved its worth, as power and computing facilities continued operations largely uninterrupted.

In the February quake, our main office was severely damaged, as was the census building. After 48 hours assessing whether we could continue the census, or usefully run it excluding Christchurch, we determined it was infeasible and on Thursday 24th I recommended to the government to cancel it.

This was only the third time the census has not been taken as scheduled since 1851, the other occasions being during the depression of 1931 and the Second World War in 1945.

Staff were granted special leave initially until the end of March, which was subsequently extended until the end of April for those who couldn’t work. Gradually through April, we introduced remote computing, allowing working from home for those we provided PCs to.  By the start of May we had 160 staff set up to work in this way.

On May 4, we commenced tenancy of a single floor in the MSD building in Winston Ave, Papanui, with 104 desks.  Some teams and individual staff were rostered on a rotation basis to utilise these ‘hot-desks’, typically for 2 or 3 days a week, with the remainder of the week working from home.  Population Statistics was one of the lucky teams to be rostered in this way!  Some staff continued to work entirely from home.

On June 13, the Winston Ave building was again damaged, and closed.  We recommenced working from home (apart from 30 desks in Sockburn).  Fortunately, all staff now had home-PCs, so work disruption was relatively limited.  Nonetheless, some further delays to releases were encountered, including GDP, due out on 23 June, being delayed until 7 July.  Again, field interviewing was suspended for 1 week.

Winston Ave was re-opened on August 29 to Population Statistics delight. At this point, we expect to return to our main office in April 2010, with all staff accommodated there, although we know this is easier to plan, than to accomplish.

In this part of the account, I have tended to focus on the office closures and openings, with sparse reference to field interviewing, and no mention of wider impacts on the other offices.  I will pick this up in the following section on our response.

Following the February quake, we recommenced crisis management operations.  Given the greater severity of impact, and that it affected Christchurch managers more personally, I asked one of my senior executives to transfer to Christchurch as acting General Manager.  He lived out of a car and his mother’s home for a fortnight, and we then rotated another senior executive member down for another fortnight.   This time, we established a formal earthquake recovery programme and designated an earthquake recovery programme manager.

Around four weeks after the February quake, our IT Group developed a solution to introduce remote access computing for staff.  When the June quake struck, all 240 staff had such a facility and ‘normal’ work resumed quickly.

Remote computing also proved invaluable in late July, when snow closed the Sockburn office, forcing everyone to resume work from home.  One staff member with a severely damaged home did ask if they had an exemption from the requirement to work at home – because of the snow plough that was proceeding down their hallway!

Remote computing had been considered in Statistics New Zealand for a number of years, but rejected. This was largely for security reasons and the perceived limited demand, given our office-based working norms. When the imperative occurred, it was a tremendously quick and successful initiative.  Security and policy matters were addressed, imposing some limitations such as no printing.

Experience has shown that productivity is inevitably slightly lower than in the office environment – because of the restrictions imposed by documents and resource material being inaccessible, due to building closures, and because of reduced interactions and communication – but it proved miles higher than the alternative!  A fantastic response from our IT team that enabled us to keep producing New Zealand’s critical statistical information.

This week about 15 Christchurch staff have been working for part or all of the week in Wellington, and four in Auckland. They’re from business units including Integrated Data Collection, Application Development and Support, Product Development and Publishing, Statistical Methods, Standard of Living, and Census. Earthquake update – 4:30pm Thursday 24 March.

One of the most crucial management and service delivery mechanisms was prioritisation of our products and services.  We had previously prioritised all of our work for budgetary and business contingency purposes, reflecting the needs of data users.  During the SARS and H1N1 pandemics, this prioritisation table was expanded to address the specific priorities for key statistics users in the event of disasters, when monitoring economic, trade, population, and perhaps some key social dimensions might be particularly needed.

Following the February quake, in consultation with Treasury, The Reserve Bank and MED, we refreshed this prioritisation of our statistical work, and then utilised it to allocate and direct our activity, staff & service support, travel and facilities management.

The reality is that not everything is as important as everything else when a crisis occurs, and some work could be deferred or slowed without immediate consequences.

Staff support has been a major element of our recovery programme from the outset.  We took care to show that we valued them and that we recognised our business depended on them.  We made clear that job security was not threatened by the quakes, whilst our statistical services were required by government.  Special paid leave was granted to all staff for whom there was no work.  Initially this was pretty much all employees but subsequently it was reduced gradually to non-essential staff and then to a case-by-case basis.

Workplace support and counselling services were made available for all staff and many took advantage of these services.  Manager support and communication was of course the primary channel.  Communication was via phone, email, website notices, and a dedicated earthquake response phone line.

I wanted a more-is-more approach to staff communications. I knew that staff wanted to know what was happening and made sure my team did everything they could to do that.

Our staff engagement survey conducted in June 2011, with 212 Christchurch responses, showed our staff felt valued.  The survey reported engagement in Christchurch on a par or slightly above the rest of the organisation.  Moreover, 80.3 percent of Christchurch staff said, “This organisation cares about the well-being of its people.” – Well above the organisation-wide response of 74.6%.

A number of staff used their homes for meeting places and one couple turned their home into an office space for project team members.  Some staff regularly skyped one another, using personal facilities and later with corporate support.  Working from home was very difficult for staff with severely damaged homes, with staff using dining rooms and other people’s homes as offices in some cases.

Locally, staff lent support to one another in terms of accommodation, shower facilities, and emotionally.   Generous donations and offers of personal assistance, including accommodation, were offered by staff from across the organisation and substantial donations were received from the Australian and UK statistics offices.

Challenges encountered

Our response and recovery has not been a smooth, steady pathway.  It has been typified by uncertainty, continually changing plans and of course continuing disruptions.

Endless communication has been a hallmark. Yet, communication was one of the most difficult challenges in the early phases.  Endeavours to check on staff and then relay messages were frustrated by telecommunication downtimes, and numerous staff having no personal email or web access – either due to an absence of power or simply having no PC or internet service.

Unfortunately, many staff had no personal contact details lodged in our internal corporate directory and even fewer had emergency contact details, and we were reliant on HR personal file records or two degrees of separation from work colleagues who could be contracted to check on colleagues they knew.  It took us a few days after February 22 to establish that all staff were accounted for and uninjured.

Communication remained fraught for a couple of weeks.  At times, for some staff, we relied on them to contact us, or to extract messages from our helpline and website.  Managers bore the brunt of the effort, with regular phone calls.  Without normal office facilities, wider communication remained difficult until staff had home computing.  Personally, I found it very frustrating, not being able to talk with staff or impart messages of support – or being able to listen to them.   Communication often felt to me like one-way transmission, although staff feedback showed no anxiety on this front.

Whilst it was a difficult process, effective communication was supported by strong pre-existing relationships with staff.  We were fortunate that two of our senior managers in Wellington had many years in the Christchurch office and others, including myself, had strong connections with staff and managers there.  This made it easier to assess how we were going to help them.

When our situation and recovery plans had settled a little, we arranged a full staff meeting at the Airport Copthorne on March 10. This was the first occasion when staff had been able to meet together and we, as senior managers, had been able to meet with them.  It was a special occasion, with stories being shared, support being lent, and questions being asked.

I recall how people appeared to have either one of two stories: they lived on the west and were fine or they were on the east and damaged, yet in both cases there was always someone worse off than them.

The preoccupation with the Christchurch recovery and staff support risked overwhelming the need to address stresses elsewhere in the organisation.  The quakes had severe impact on other parts of our business operations and morale.  There were the obvious indirect impacts on corporate, IT and statistical support and areas straining to assist Christchurch operations.  Extra effort was required to validate the accuracy of statistics affected by the quakes – The Household Labour Force Survey estimates of employment and unemployment, for example.  There were also substantial groups of staff in Wellington and around the country whose work was cancelled or significantly reduced as a consequence of the quake.  These included our social statistics area and our field interviewers reeling from cancellation of three household surveys that had been scheduled to follow the census.  I was acutely conscious to avoid the suggestion that the quake impacted only Christchurch staff, when it was being felt much more widely.

The census has a special place in New Zealand’s social and economic discourse, and is hugely significant to our Statistics New Zealand’s operations and psyche, standing over all other collections, like Goliath over the ranks of Israel.  Its cancellation was a threat to the organisation’s morale and capability.  Upon its cancellation, after four years of planning and development, on the very eve of its execution, the census programme team had to wind-down its operations, dis-employ thousands of staff, cancel countless contracts – and then urgently develop options for government decisions about its future taking and postponement.  Then they needed to recommence planning to undertake it again in 2013.  This was an extraordinary test of commitment and leadership, which they fulfilled superbly.

We unfortunately had to reduce our interviewing work by approximately half of what was planned through the March to October period.

The quakes were an awesome reminder of the forces of nature exceeding those of man and beyond our control.  The inherent desire for certainty and control over our plans and business activity stands in stark contrast yet is hard to shake.  Our recovery plans were a continually moving feast.

Builders are notoriously difficult to hold to schedule, but dependencies on insurers, building owners, property managers, engineering reports, IT suppliers, and continued quakes made the foibles of trades-people the least of our concerns.

The start-stop nature of plans to return to buildings was especially difficult for staff looking for some sort of return to normality.  In the most difficult event, we re-opened our census building at one stage (March 22) on the understanding that it was safe and green-stickered, only to then have a full written structural review reverse the decision, declaring it unsafe and yellow-stickered on March 28.

Contingency planning became an organisational expertise, along with the truism that you can never communicate enough.  We simply kept people informed of what we could and couldn’t do, what was expected and what was uncertain.

The final challenge I would identify was that regular ‘production’ work was much easier to maintain or progress than development projects and organisational change.  We managed to sustain normal or business as usual operations very successfully.  Change or development projects were more difficult. Project reviews over many years have told us that co-location of project teams and intensive communication is important for project success.  Moreover, we typically follow an agile IT development methodology that involves daily meetings and short sprints to complete tasks.  Daily meetings were infeasible with staff scattered through the region, but church and RSA halls were hired for weekly or fortnightly project meetings.  Even with heroic efforts, we still encountered modest project delays.

Factors important to our success

Behind our successful response and recovery were a number of key attributes: Extremely high levels of communication and personal and visible presence by senior managers.  We centralised communication planning and setting key messages which ensured clarity and consistency.  Internal communications were frequent and targeted for multiple audiences – managers, Christchurch staff, all staff.  Much was done by phone or email and face to face when possible, with the all-staff meetings being highly appreciated events and opportunities for dialogue between staff and senior managers.   External (stakeholder) communications were also highly important, keeping our data users informed ahead of time about revisions to release schedules and potential quality issues with reduced collection coverage.

The commitment of our managers and staff to what we stand for and do – and to one another – is tremendous and stood us in great stead during the year.  Other business areas willingly assisted Christchurch teams in getting releases out.  People went to extraordinary lengths to meet commitments and to undertake recovery efforts.  Everyone was willing to try things out.  People banded together and ultimately our recovery and response has been a fantastic collaborative effort.  How our people responded and kept working, indeed working much harder than normal despite their difficult personal circumstances, was tremendous testament to their organisational commitment and the culture of the organisation.

Our distributed leadership might also be considered part of the success.  Beyond its own activity, the Christchurch office had often been thought of as providing back-up to Wellington, should it be required. In this case, Wellington and Auckland could support Christchurch and sustain our operations.  Senior executive capability (all in Wellington) was unimpaired, though local management was.  Should a quake occur in Wellington, the organisation’s capability to operate with its senior executives directly affected would pose some different challenges.

Innovation and flexibility in the way we operated, in part from individual initiative to find solutions and seek ways forward.  We have been purposefully building an organisational culture of initiative and innovation, and it paid enormous fruits in this instance.  Perhaps risk-taking seemed easier when options were scarce or maybe the downsides of failure seemed trivial when the situation was so dire!  Whatever the trigger, it was a fantastic response by the IT team especially and others to overcome hurdles, ignore constraints, and forge ways forward.

Recognition that not everything is equally important and willingness to prioritise our activities and recovery efforts.  In fact, we found some things weren’t important at all.  For example, as we tested the demand for our products and services, we identified a couple had virtually no demand at all, so we permanently cancelled them.  Nobody seems to have noticed!  These were the exceptions, but there was an important lesson that not all activity has to be sustained, some can be deferred, and in the event of diminished capacity business commitments can be rescheduled to free resources for higher priority activities.

Geoff Bascand – Concluding remarks

The Christchurch earthquakes severely tested our organisational resilience. But we came through exceedingly well, perhaps even stronger as a result. The impact was sharpest in Christchurch, but the reverberations were also substantial on the business in Wellington, Auckland and throughout the country with our distributed household interviewers.

We adapted and succeeded in sustaining service delivery, through both individual and corporate initiatives. Supporting the welfare of staff was crucial and an over-riding objective in all our decision-making. Strong staff goodwill, faster recovery, and greater achievement of our work commitments than anticipated were fruits of this approach.

We developed more flexible ways of working, and these enabled us to keep statistical releases flowing and projects advancing with extremely limited office facilities. The remote computing innovation has brought precious new resilience capability to the organisation should similar risks occur in future. It may also have changed our organisation forever.

We have new-found confidence in our innovation capabilities and we now know we can manage extremely diverse working arrangements successfully. It is not yet clear how much our standard office-based arrangements will change in the medium-term. There are real downsides in communication, team cohesion, organisational change and project delivery from staff working at home or in multiple locations. With our large transformation programme underway, co-location has a special premium.

Our earthquake recovery is a continually evolving situation. We are 13 months on from the September 4 quake and still located in multiple, temporary offices. Barring further quakes, we think we foresee some temporary stability, through to April next year, when we expect to return to our permanent office facilities.

However, history has taught us that little has gone strictly to plan so far, and we are best to expect some upsets or disturbances somewhere over the next few months. Organisational adaptability is sometimes argued as the most important enduring strategic capability. We have learned that it is also an extremely important attribute in recovering from a crisis. It will also hold us in good stead for the future.

As one staff member said:

Nothing seems to faze us now, everyone seems to have got quite resilient. They expect change and make the best of it.

Change is by no means done. We have a census to re-run and decisions yet to be made on the location of its main operations. Notwithstanding our increased adaptability, every office move or change in working arrangements is a threat or disruption to someone, and brings some new leadership challenges. We are working through the difficulties posed by some staff not feeling safe working in multi-storey offices. This may or may not be compounded when we return to the particular building where staff experienced the February quake. Christchurch staff themselves face years of ongoing change in their lives away from work, as housing, schooling, and community circumstances adjust. As one described,

Work is not what it used to be for us….There is the abnormality of our future so there is that distraction from our work. The “new normal” is actually the abnormal.

Our leadership mettle no doubt will be tested further. It has, however, proved tremendously strong and capable so far, which gives me great confidence in our ability to respond and deal with any other shocks – seismic, economic or political – that may befall us.

While our specific responses might not be exactly what suit others, these broad organisational attributes are ones that should serve everyone well in the event of disaster, and ones we can all build.

Charles Waldegrave from the Family Centre provides his impressions of how best to lead people in a disaster: We’re an organisation that has a Maori section, a Pacific section and a Pakeha section. The Pacific people were just sort of sucked out when that tsunami hit Samoa in November 2009. They just went straight there, experienced counsellors and therapists and they rang me and said, “The Ministry of Health has asked us to lead a Psycho-social team here around the affected villages. We’ve been out there and the normal counselling and psychotherapy we do is no use at all. Please help us find out how we can best address disaster.”

So, I stopped what I was doing for a week and just read everything. I also rang friends of ours who had been working in disasters. I read an enormous amount of research, linked up with people who had been involved in Sri Lanka after the big tsunami there, people in the Middle-east who had worked in psychiatry around the terror attacks there, and other friends who had worked in Rwanda. After that, we developed an up date approach about addressing trauma amongst people.

We’ve talked a lot about businesses today, but all of these businesses have people, with many of them seeing terrible sights amongst this disaster and some of them need help.

We were contracted by the Ministry of Social Development to go down to Christchurch in March, and we worked with 790 frontline workers in health and education and NGOs, all who were working with people trying to address trauma in half-day workshops.

The key learning is that there has been a big change in understanding about how you work with people who are traumatised or have elevated emotion of different problems as a result, or withdraw as a result of seeing terrible things.

The normal work in PTSD up until recently has been to psychologically debrief people, take them back through the incidents and try to support them as they go through. It is now recognised through a lot of research that this is the worst thing you can do. Now, it is important to focus on resilience and be very careful not to traumatise people.

Here’s what the World Health Organisation says – psychological debriefing is not recommended.

It’s quite common to have elevated rates of common mental disorders following an event. What they recommend in its place is what they refer to as ‘psychological first aid’ – convey compassion, assess needs, ensure basic needs are met, do not force talking, provide company (preferably from family or significant others), encourage, but do not force, social support, protect from further harm.

To explain some of this: Where the problem comes is that some normal aspects of counselling or psychotherapy can unintentionally re-traumatise people and leave them psychologically worse off.

The logic behind this is that a counsellor or psychotherapist is trying to help someone and very often they’re working to remove resistance, people have things that have gone on in their past that has affected them, so they try to help people address that, to face things that are happening in their lives or relationships, so you become very good at addressing resistance. If you treat someone post-trauma like this, where they’ve seen deaths, had bad things happen to their homes, have friends who have seen bad things, and start pushing these protective elements that they have then you can actually re-traumatise them.

If you think of a continuum of hope and despair – when you have a redundancy, broken marriage, or other traumatic event, you move down this continuum. When there’s a major event, they go way down to the despair end, and for most people they don’t want to talk about it, especially in the immediate weeks after, so try not to tip them further down the scale.

So what we did was try to ask people positive questions e.g. “how have you managed since the quakes?” and what you find is that people tell stories of all sorts of strengths.

Then you find ways to show people who have felt victims of the event to realise that they have actually contributed a lot and helped other people, and it gives them a sense of agency.

Psycho-social first-aid tips: Helpful questions avoid re-traumatising. Focus on the strengths of people’s stories of survival. Help them to regain their important points of social and family connections and their critical people symbols and places of meaning. If they go to church, encourage them back to the church. If they usually go to the pub or sports groups, do the same. Building these connections become really important.

Children have particular needs.

Age appropriate interventions are really important. It’s important to encourage resiliency and strength with young children.

What tends to happen is children hear the stories of adults, and they tend to go inwards. So what we found was important in Samoan schools was helping kids to free-out. One of the things we would do was to give the kids a sentence and put them in pairs. They read the sentence to each other louder and louder and to see if they could out-shout the other person. It works. It freed the lungs up, it was fun – they really enjoyed it. The other thing is we get them in pairs and we get them to push against each other and it gets their bodies moving again, because events constrain the kids.

This quote is from Anne Marsden –

Resilience does not come from rare and special qualities, but from the everyday magic of ordinary, normative human resources and the minds, brains and bodies of children, and their families and relationships and in their communities. It follows that efforts to promote resilience and confidence in children at risk should focus on strategies that protect and restore the effect and efficacy of these basic systems.

So what we’ve learnt is not to dramatise, not to pathologise – these are the things that don’t help.

It’s also important to understand that people have quite strong, elevated mental health issues. It’s perfect normal to have those for a period of time, and they tend to weigh in afterwards. Things like intrusive memories, flashbacks, changed attitudes about themselves, some people lose confidence, some people get very anxious, some people become more detached, these are all perfectly normal symptoms which in normal circumstances would be seen as mental health issues. But these are completely normal responses of the body to a disaster and they normally wane after a period of so many weeks.

For children, there are perfectly normal things to be aware of too:

They start re-enacting the earthquake in their play, they can become clingy or bedwetting, they can get pains in their body, school avoidance, all these types of things and it’s important to understand that this is a process. Its only when then this goes on for a number of months, when other children have moved on, that we may have a more serious issue.

So, it’s important to normalise these events and to help people move with good information about them. The critical work and the summary of the research has been written up very well in a rather large paper by Steven Hobfoll, from a Pennsylvanian University, where they gathered specialists from all over the world. Five things are emphasised: To promote a sense of safety, to calm people, promote a sense of self and collective efficacy – that people have agency, they’re not just victims thrown about by the land, they can be effective, promote connectedness and most of all, promote hope.

In the stories that people tell, they often tell the story of the bad things that have happened, but in that story are all the good things that they have done. Pick those resilient aspects and reaffirm those, rather than the negative ones.

Richard Ballantyne is Executive Director of Ballantynes Department Store, one of a handful of buildings that largely survived intact in Christchurch’s CBD. His observations follow:

I start with reference to Charles Dickens famous historical novel, A Tale of Two Cities. My address today is Two Tales of A City. In particular, the manner in which Ballantynes management has handled the people side of its business during this past year, and secondly on how a group of people have gone about rebuilding the start of a commercial pulse in the middle of the red zone of Christchurch. And this pulse is due to beat shortly.

Both these tales merge into one. Some of you may not realise, though many will, this is the second major disaster that Ballantynes experienced, in 1947 it had its tragic fire, and lost 41 of its staff. And the only difference between that and now, is the fact that there was loss of life in our building, and then we had a vibrant marketplace in the centre of Christchurch. Nothing much existed outside the four avenues, and all the business transactions and that activity happened in the business district. So when we began again after the fire, and the company was insolvent, we had a thriving marketplace to start within. This time, it’s totally different.

Looking west down City Mall to Bridge of Remembrance - Image Richard Ballantyne

Our building is about the only one left, in 4 blocks, that can be operated. At present, we have about 470 staff, of which 380 work in the Christchurch shop, and during these earthquakes we’ve had up to 600 customers in the building. Fortunately we’d have some good experience, because Christchurch inner city didn’t get badly affected by the September the 4th earthquake. We had the building checked and after the subsequent aftershock of September the 8th, we got back into business on Friday, September the 10th. And business was exceptionally good. Then came the Boxing Day. And previous to the Boxing Day we had done an awful lot of staff training. We have always done a lot of staff training on evacuation, due to the fire. We built it up a lot because of these earthquakes. Boxing Day, December 26th – all our training went to plan. We were closed for 3 days as a result of that, and the staff handled the customers exceptionally well. And then we opened again, quite innocently, and business was exceptionally good again.

Come February the 22nd at 10 to 2. It was absolute pandemonium inside the shop, and because of the strength of our building (it can have 6 or 7 storeys built on top of it), we kept people inside the building. The orders were to try to keep the staff and customers inside. And that’s very hard to do, because people like to run to light.

And outside...in City Mall, the masonry was coming down all around us. Image Richard Ballantyne

Not many people have mentioned the June 13th earthquake. That happened right under the city and caused a lot more damage to inner city buildings, and the poor old engineers had to start their work all over again. One cannot praise the engineering profession enough, in this whole saga.

February 22nd, and management’s role was really firstly to look after staff. Accounting for staff was very difficult, although we did have a plan in place, but staff were scattered to all four corners of the city. And then the telecommunications network went down, and so on, and so on. So communicating with staff was very difficult. We managed to account for all our staff, I think, within 48 hours, and thank goodness, all of them were fit and well.

Subsequent to that, because we didn’t have a business, we decided to meet frequently with all our managers, and for the managers to meet weekly with all the staff. So we kept their interest in the business, we were able to monitor their well-being, and we paid regular visits to staff. We contacted them on the phone when need be, and gave them material help when need be.

All staff got paid on time every week, we had good business interruption insurance, and very luckily, ours had already been tested with the September and boxing day earthquakes, so we had a process in place with our insurer. When Peter Townsend talks about the $257 million – those were for businesses within the centre of the CBD or in Christchurch who were small businesses – businesses who didn’t have business interruption insurance, and the government did a great job there.

"Getting Started" - Interested parties on my front lawn - Richard Ballantyne

Getting the business going – well, we had little to get going. So somebody came up with a bright idea of running bus trips to our Timaru branch. And the Christchurch shop’s about 80% of our business. So we ran bus trips to Timaru with our customers, three times a week, and over 7000 people have gone on those bus trips – it’s been truly amazing. We’ve got popular cafés inside our Christchurch shop, so we decided to open up a café in Riccarton Mall, and that’s gone tremendously well – but the rent’s too high.

We all also opened up a valuations business for china in Merivale Mall, and I think we’ve done over 5000 valuations on china, and some of them are up to a quarter of a million dollars, believe it or not. We ran a huge sale, in Christchurch in the CBS Arena – biggest ever sale for the Arena. Christchurch and people from beyond, had a great time. Getting the stock out of the building was a logistical nightmare, but we did it. And to sort it into saleable, written-off, and subject to claim, and again saleable after reopening, has proved a challenge. We’ve also traded through our catalogues. We’ve always had a catalogue business, and sold through the Internet.

Lessons to be learned

Ballantynes' six storey building coming down - nine years old! We’ve had our building bought up to 100% of new code, and staff and customer education on seismic quality are very important - Richard Ballantyne

Staff education on the seismic quality of a building is terribly important. We know staff and customers of course are going to be scared coming back into the centre of Christchurch, so we’ve had our building bought up to 100% of new code, and staff and customer education are very important.

Agreeing with Dr Helen Anderson, I think certification of buildings is most desirable.

Staff communication – phone, cell phone, email and nowadays text – very important. Staff training on what to do for themselves and with customers in the event of a disaster. One takes it for granted that people know what to do – but they don’t. For reasons to be understood – we’ve always practiced fire drills. But you rarely practice an earthquake drill. We have to get our staff ready for any type of emergency evacuation.

Moving on to Tale two, which is really a leadership story on getting the commercial heart of Christchurch going again, because there’s absolutely nothing in there at all at the moment. The idea of ReStart came from a group of business people who thought because Ballantyne’s building was basically sound, and had suffered little structural damage – a lot of superficial damage, but not much structural – that we could get something going around Ballantynes. So the idea of ReStart 29th of October 2011 was born.

And we were savvy enough, the group, that we knew we had to go to the politicians, and we knew the plan had to be commercial, and we also knew that we had to appeal to the vanity of politicians.

...it was the one ray of hope, of getting something up and going in the middle of Christchurch - Richard Ballantyne

So we got a great idea together, to start business around Ballantyne’s in the form of container shops. And we put a leasing agreement together, a funding proposal, and everything a politician could want. And they did like it, because it was the one ray of hope, of getting something up and going in the middle of Christchurch. For instance, the hotels that are left, many have to come yet. The hotels that can be restrengthened, they will not be open until 2013. People have spoken of speed on intent, and getting something going. This is what we decided to do, so we put the idea to the politicians, they gave it a great tick.

We then went to the Council – they were incredibly enthusiastic. We went to Civil Defence – they gave it a tick and said we’ll allow you into the Red Zone, we’ll make special arrangements for you, demolish all the buildings around you, make it safe so contractors can get in and start work on the concept. Everybody gave it a tick, until it came to get funding.

And then there was a black hole. You can understand the politician’s point of view, because the funding would have been shown to be favouring a group of business people – and that’s not politically correct, nor politically right. So we wasted, unfortunately, I would say 6 weeks, trying to get through officialdom, to get some funding for this project. In the end, batting it around the various government departments, it ended up in Internal Affairs, and in the Christchurch Recovery Trust. So the funding, which is slightly under 3 million dollars for this, came from the Christchurch Recovery Trust.

So we’ve got the funding, and we’re on our way, and we’re very, very thankful for everybody who has helped us. But there are problems with demolition; with making the site safe: compliance issues, with fire – there’s no wastewater there at the moment, no sewerage, electricity or gas. All of this is starting to come on stream for a very small area of Christchurch.

Ballantynes, after the June the 13th earthquake, suffered quite a bit of further damage, so we decided to get it strengthened up to 100% of new building code. And we’ve strengthened all our columns with special carbon fibre cladding.

So the containers are up there, I took the photograph just a few days ago, it’s getting bigger and better everyday, and we will be open by the 29th of October, 2011 – before Cup and Show week.

Cup and Show week, and Christmas of course, have great significance to a retailer – They’re the only time you really make any profit. So once you miss Cup and Show week, you’re in for a very, very austere time.

I think having some sort of organisation on the side – that can actually fund a little development like this – a ray of hope – to get a disaster area up and going again, is something that should be considered by all towns and councils. Thank you very much.

Bruce Glavovic is Associate Director of the Joint Centre for Disaster Research at Massey University. His presentation talks about confronting social vulnerability and leading people through perils like earthquakes.

Risk is often thought of as quite a technical thing about probability and consequence, but really, there are two dimensions that are fundamental: One is the physical peril, the other is the people at risk.

It’s about social vulnerability. A disaster occurs when we have a natural hazard event, that exceeds the capacity of the people affected to cope, and they rely on outside support.

There is little we can do about physical perils like earthquakes. There’s a lot we can do about social vulnerability. If we’re going to reduce disaster risk, we’ve got to confront social vulnerability. And it’s too late to worry about that after an event – this is stuff that has to happen before an event.

Looking at history, there are many civilisations that have come and gone. For some of them, it’s partly a function of environmental change, global change, and the inability to adapt to those changing circumstances. So part of our reality is that we live in an era of global change, and escalating disaster risk.

More people are living in harm’s way. So we need to make wise decisions about that vulnerability. So what is recovery? –

►Recovery is a complex, multidimensional, nonlinear process.
►It involves more than rebuilding structures and infrastructure; rather, it is about people’s lives and livelihoods.
►The process has no clear end point and there is not necessarily a return to what existed before (Intl Conference on Urban Disaster Reduction, 2005)

In years gone by, recovery was conceptualised really as a reconstruction process; a series of almost linear steps about how you rebuild places. Cities are resilient and we rebuild them, whether it’s after wars or natural hazard events. But what is obvious, is recovery is more than a rebuilding process. What really challenges us is the nature of recovery.

It’s not just the physical environment that we reconstruct. It’s not just the economic environment. It’s an integrated reality of people and the places they live in. So certainly, it’s more than fixing broken pipes and potholes. It’s certainly more than heritage questions, and designing and building new buildings, as challenging as that is.

There’s a series of critical infrastructures that we have to rebuild – including physical, economic, social and so forth.

Fundamentally, from 30,000 feet, you look down on Christchurch at the many players who are playing critical roles in the recovery. How do you interconnect these different elements? It’s a bit like a spider’s web. Each one of these things is connected to others, and if you start breaking or ignoring one element over others, you don’t have as strong a web,

To use another analogy, those old bridges in the days before concrete, those individual stones that make up an arch, the keystone – they support each other. And the bridge has integrity and strength, as long as those stones are mutually supported. Once you start chipping away and undermining any one of those stones, the whole bridge is going to be at risk, so we need to focus, not only in the physical and the economic, but fundamentally, on the social. I come back to that social vulnerability over and over again.

But bridges and spider webs aside, it’s people that we’re talking about. It’s about the relationship between individuals and their families, between neighbours and their communities, and the places they live that are fundamental. It’s the communities in Christchurch, in Canterbury, that are recovering. Government can’t do that for communities. What government can do is to support those communities in recovery.

So what is recovery? It’s complex. It’s multidimensional. It’s certainly not linear. It involves more than rebuilding structures and infrastructure; really it’s about people’s lives and people’s livelihoods. There’s no clear endpoint, and as Peter Townsend said earlier, you certainly don’t go back to what was before, as much as we hanker after what is familiar and what we know.

So, recovery really begins when a community repairs or develops the social, political and economic processes, institutions and relationships – trust is key to this – that enables it to function in the new context within which it finds itself. As you think about recovery, beyond the individual organisation and entity, and start thinking about the connections between government agencies, and within government at different levels, between government and the private sector, between community-based organisations, old-established organisations and new emergent organisations, it is about those relationships. And critically important, recovery is shaped by the pre-event relationships.

So there’s something that Wellington can be doing now – focussing on building social capital. How do you build intact, positive relationships between all these players, so that in the event of a major disaster, you can build on strong relationships?

I spent time in New Orleans, and the Gulf Coast after Katrina. You’ll have seen on television, one of the communities that has been really decimated – the lower 9th Ward, a predominantly African-American community – low-lying, a physically vulnerable community, and socially challenging. In a nutshell, excellent technical planning, naive from a political point of view, has ended up putting people back in harm’s way. So when the next flood occurs, as will happen – it’s just a matter of time – you are going to have communities flooded out again.

So, many good, well-intentioned efforts – like Brad Pitt’s Make it right project – some really creative, innovative architecture, fantastic, it looks like good recovery on a whole lot of levels…But on another level, in three or four decades from now, when we have another category 3 or category 4 event, we will see flooding again. Is that wise?

One year on from September 4th, what might we conclude? I want to emphasise that it’s hard to take anyone to task in any aspect of this recovery for not doing their best. There are people who are working themselves to a standstill with the best of intentions, across every organisation and entity in Christchurch. It’s an incredible story that, in itself, is one of hope and encouragement. But there are three domains of uncertainty: seismic risk, livelihood uncertainty, and governance uncertainty.

In respect to the seismic risk – we’re experiencing the re-calibration of risk as this ongoing event unfolds. We’re still trying to make sense of what really is the nature of that risk. That has had effects on insurance and on other dimensions that have put on hold some of the basic choices that people make about their livelihoods.

So there’s also this domain of livelihood uncertainty. You’re unsure about where to rebuild, or what you do about your business. Two challenging elements. The third domain, I would describe as the governance process. We have had a quick and meaningful focus of legislation and the establishment or CERA. But, there’s a lot of uncertainty between key players, like Waimakarere District and the City and Selwyn and CERA, and the Minister’s office and so forth – about precisely what the boundaries are, about who’s responsible for what. That uncertainty around governance bedevils this process. And despite the measures that have been taken, there’s a real need to focus more attention on that.

Picture Wellington with those 8600 aftershocks - and think about what that means to you - Bruce Glavovic

So I’ll pick up two elements in this challenge: on leadership and community collaboration. Those 8600 aftershocks for Christchurch – picture Wellington with those 8600 aftershocks – and think about what that means to you. This is not to be ignored or glossed over. This is worth confronting very seriously, and I consider the governance dimension to be key to this.

What kind of leadership do we need? Complicated problems might require top-down, command and control decisions and processes. It’s a different kind of leadership, dealing with complex problems. So in recovery, let’s distinguish the response phase from the recovery phase. In response you’re dealing with high danger, there’s little dispute about priorities – rescue people, triage, secure buildings, there may be half a dozen things that you do, you want to stabilise the situation, and buy time.

In those circumstances, the archetypal, alpha-male, militaristic model works well, and there’re women who are really good at that alpha-male role.

The recovery phase is entirely different. We’re dealing with low danger, proliferation of complex, difficult decisions, high dispute. In those situations where you’re trying to build resilience and sustainability. What’s needed are empowering adaptive processes – a nurturing, female leadership model – and there are some men that are quite good as that as well.

It’s not enough to have lots of people talking and sharing ideas. Because what you can end up with, with all these efforts is essentially a cacophony, and essentially over time with all these actors, you have these disparate activities going on that actually don’t give you a trajectory for recovery. It is chaos and confusion, a lot of light and heat, but not a lot of meaningful energy that you can use. So the challenge in recovery is to navigate a pathway through this.

So I’ll end with this: To do recovery planning and strategising well, you need to take time to set those enabling conditions in place. It starts with pre-event planning; it starts with a whole lot of activities before you start producing plans. Underpinning that is some basic work in democracy and participatory planning.

This is not thin, RMA-light consultation, but meaningful and authentic community collaboration. That is the foundation..

Then you can start getting on into implementing key recovery actions. There’s a real temptation – there’s the speed versus deliberation dilemma. You want to get in and see action quickly. But if you haven’t laid the ground beforehand, you can waste a lot of time paradoxically. Once you’ve built a shared understanding of risk, once you’ve started getting people’s skills and capabilities built. Once you are engaging together using those skills and capabilities, you can do community oriented action. You can then move on into targeted recovery outcomes. And these are not simple, easy choices. They are wicked choices, as you trade-off key social goods. That requires effective collaborative community problem solving – a different kind of leadership, a different kind of role.

And finally, you move into this idealised situation of sustainability and resilience, which we know, is something to strive for. Nirvana.- we may never reach it, it’s like peace and justice and all of those good things – worth striving for, but takes effort. And you will only get there when you have collaborative communities.

The question to be asking in the context of Christchurch – and thinking about these issues in the context of Wellington – how can the recovery process engage local people in these processes of joint learning and public decision-making? How do you capitalise on local culture and local knowledge? How do you mobilise local capacity to rebuild?

It’s all too easy to be focussed on the resources that are injected from outside – what are the capabilities and assets in situ? How do you enable these local communities to make choices that build safer more sustainable?

How do we keep and secure the things that are good, the incredible culture, music, cuisine, culture, architecture, and discard that part of our culture that strangles us – the crime, the violence, the poor schools. – Mitchell Andrew, then Lieutenant-Governor of the state of Louisiana, now Mayor of New Orleans

You can only face these challenges by working together and in collaborative communities. We must focus on the readiness and response, and on the reaction and the recovery. This is our challenge.

It’s about legitimate process, leadership that’s appropriate to the circumstance. Be aware that response and recovery are two different issues, and that local matters. Build linkages. Do what’s needed before the event, and focus on building collaborative communities.

Download the PDF Leading people

Links of interest:

Cashel Mall Re:START Video (Timelapse photography of the final week of construction and fit-out, and the opening weekend of the Cashel Mall Re:START shopping precinct).

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