Christchurch, New Zealand, March 23

We started the day by taking a gondola to a point high above Christchurch atop a dormant (we hoped) volcano. On one side we viewed the city and on the other the town of Lyttleton.  Unfortunately we did not have the time to explore the beautiful Lyttleton side so we settled for a bird's eye view from the top. It was quite lovely!

We have visited many wonderful and strikingly beautiful locations in New Zealand, the city of Christchurch being our southernmost and final destination in the country. 

Christchurch is a large and lovely city with many spacious parks and interesting neighborhoods. In September 2010 a major earthquake struck the city. The massive earthquake destroyed many buildings and damaged considerably more but because it occurred at 4:30 AM the loss of life was minimal. A second significant earthquake struck five months later in February 2011. Many of the buildings that had been damaged during the first earthquake but had been deemed safe subsequently collapsed. Because the quake occurred in mid-day the loss of life on this occasion was very high.

It has been more than three years since the last earthquake but the downtown district still looks as if it had been recently bombed, much like Berlin must have appeared a few years after the end of the second world war. Most of the buildings in the downtown district and nearby areas completely collapsed, trapping those inside. Most of the remaining structures were subsequently determined to be uninhabitable and had to be razed. A significant number of empty and partially destroyed buildings still dot the city, all surrounded by high chain link fencing.  Fenced open lots, some still strewn with broken rubble and the sites of large buildings, are now mostly cleared away and empty. The fenced off open spaces stretch on and on for block after block. The primary focus remains to continue to clear away the debris. Just finding a location out of the city to dump the rubble and moving it must have been a monumental task.  Here and there, every few blocks, new buildings are slowly beginning to rise. Manpower is short but the efforts are herculean.

We stayed in a small B & B in a quaint “Victorian era” neighborhood near downtown. It too had suffered damage but had been repaired and was now ascertained to be tenable. Six buildings on the same side of the street however had suffered much more severe damage and had consequently been razed and removed. On the other side of the street every single lot was empty from one end of the block to the next.

The city is continuing the struggle to clear the fallen debris but still have more than fifty major buildings that require demolition. The work goes on but it's going to be a long tough haul for the citizens of Christchurch to rebuild this once beautiful city.

We strolled through downtown late yesterday afternoon. What must have once been a strikingly attractive and modern area was now mostly empty and replete with fenced off open cleared lots. We found it sad and very depressing to witness their loss and consequently, out of respect for all those who have died and suffered,  have decided to honor them by taking no personal pictures of the devastation. Christchurch will surely require decades to rebuild. We decided to add a link to the photos that were published worldwide shortly after the earthquake. If you would care to view those photos from the second earthquake, click on or copy and paste the link below into your browser. It will speak to you more eloquently than we could  ever begin to describe:

https://www.google.com/search?q=christchurch+earthquake+2011&espv=210&es_sm=91&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=AxsxU82tDeaQiAev74DIAg&sqi=2&ved=0CDAQsAQ&biw=1280&bih=679