Wellington property owners have been acting quickly and responsibly to assess the damage to their buildings in the days since the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that hit the top of the South Island. In my own offices on Lambton Quay, the owner asked that we stay out of the building until he had had engineers assess the damage. This work was completed on Tuesday afternoon and (as there was happily no damage) we were then given the all-clear to reoccupy the building. This has been the process throughout the city with no direction or help from central government and where necessary buildings have been kept closed for further inspection and remedial work. Justin Lester may not have satisfied Brownlee's authoritarian bent but four days after the earthquake there have been no reports of any injuries from earthquake damage in central Wellington so the risk appears to have been well managed and the mayor seems to have made exactly the right call in not closing down the entire central city.
The best thing that a government can do to facilitate the recovery from a natural disaster, as was proved in Joplin, Missouri*, is to get the hell out of the way and let individuals and businesses get on with the job of recovery. A few of Wellington's buildings are seriously damaged but the vast majority have superficial or no damage at all. We don't need red zones, and we certainly don't need the Brownlee's jackbooted approach to dealing with residents and property owners in Christchurch, to get on with the recovery work. Please, just leave us alone, Gauleiter Brownlee.
* H/T to Not PC for the link to the WSJ article on Joplin (which is subscription only - if you can't get past the paywall read about what it says in this blog post).
1 comment:
For the last five years I come back to Christchurch from Bangkok in October.
Every single year, I pick up a copy of the Press, and it says a decision will be reached about the Christchurch Square and Cathedral soon. Then I stop getting the Press.
Just down the road from me you can break through the no go barrier to some nice open ground beside a peaceful looking Avon.
The rest of the City is relatively difficult to negotiate because Dalziel and the retards put concrete blockades and trees where roads were before.
Yes, and cycle lanes, cycle lanes, they pulled down a few houses to put up cycle lanes.
It would be hard to vote Brownlee out, his electorate over on the west is away from the wrecked areas, and anyway they vote for the status quo after earthquakes.
On my land we dropped about 70cm and shifted about 35 meters of silt in 2012. I quickly realised that we were basically alone.
We helped each other a lot. I rebuilt the land up over five years, hundreds and hundreds of hours of work .
I have a cheque here from EQC for land damage $320.20.
On other issues like RMA, Democracy, Race based privilege, Housing, Reserve Bank we are going to give blue rinse Nanny one hiding next year.
I expect to see Whitehouse replaced shortly after the election, then pansy Finlayson, and then last and least the democracy salesman in mid 2018. Immigration will be the spearhead and Democracy the iron fist.
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