The cordon in Christchurch CBD was reduced yesterday afternoon allowing many residents and businesses to return to their homes/offices to secure buildings and get what they needed from them. Being in Green Zone 1 I was able to go into town yesterday afternoon to assess the damage and pick up work and office things in order to make it easier to work from home.
The carpark is full of silt, dust and mounds of liquefaction that didn’t crack through the surface of the concrete. Every office has a broken window where the building assessment teams got in to check the stability and safety – thankfully ours has a green sticker – and the whole place just has a massive emptiness to it.
SIFT is still operational even though we are not working out of that office at the moment.
Here are some photos of the inside of our office:
You can’t quite see it from the photo above but the office desks have moved about half a metre out from the wall.
The glass board table took 5 burley blokes to move in pieces. This one middle section piece of glass will need to be lifted by at least 4 people in order to put it back in place. It has moved out a couple of inches and I think the whole table moved towards the right wall.
And although this was a shock to look at it is nothing compared to the destruction of other buildings, people’s homes and the lives of the residents of Christchurch. It will take a long time to rebuild.
