Christchurch quake info.

If you need help finding people in Christchurch or you can confirm the whereabouts of people, please use the above widget, provided by Google.

Use @safeinChch Twitter account also to report anyone safe that you know of or call 0800 REDCROSS if you know they have been reported missing, or to report people missing.

Use Twitter hashtag #chchAID for offers & requests of any help, shelter, water, blanket etc. I will repost all offers/req of aid here and try to keep the hashtag clear of spam.

NOTE: CBD is closed, police warn they will arrest people breaking the curfew/cordon.

50% of the city still has no safe water. Pls collect your rainwater, boil any tap water, conserve water i.e. don't flush toilets, have showers, run tap water as little as possible.

To help:
NZ donations at banks, Red Cross, Salvation Army. In Canterbury, contact Student Volunteer Army to help.

Background:

A 6.3 magnitude earthquake hit the Canterbury area at 12.51pm today - February 22. The quake, approximately 5km underground and located 10km south east of the city has caused wide spread damage, bursting sewage lines, damaging buildings and homes, cutting power and telephone lines to many areas of the city. The mayor of Christchurch, Bob Parker, has declared a state of emergency.

Rediscovering Christchurch, Week Three

Ferrymead

This week I gathered up my parents and kids and we all went to Ferrymead. This is one of the places in Christchurch I've been intending to go ever since I got here ten years ago but never got around to it. I'm told I have actually been before but since I don't remember it at all I'm counting this as a 'new' place.

The first thing I have to say is that it's a lot bigger than I had expected. I hadn't realised that it was more than the heritage village, but there is also a fascinating array of museums and displays by a whole bunch of diverse groups. We were also there on a steam train day which had my boys fascinated. We rode every train and tram there (some more than once) and they found the experience really exciting. The best part about the train and the tram is that once you pay for the ticket you can ride them as many times as you'd like, so the boys were able to climb on and go as often as they wanted. We were there for several hours and I know we missed a lot of what was on offer.

In the heritage village itself we talked to a few of the people who run the buildings and one of the guys showed us pictures of the house he was in charge of. Its chimney fell through the roof of the back room so people can't go in there, though it's the first time I've been that up close to a collapsed roof. Up close like that it's quite confronting to see and then you move through into the kitchen where the pantry has been basically wiped out of all its crockery. For those of us who weren't very badly affected it's a good way to see what happened without feeling like you're intruding on the residents of the badly hit areas. They have also made the decision not to use the fire in the kitchen anymore since the earthquake because of safety worries, so I'm not sure what they do for cooking anymore. One thing I hadn't known is that they actually live out there so they were in that tiny little old house, up a very narrow set of stairs while the pantry crashed to the floor and the chimney fell through the roof. This is just one of the many buildings that will have to be repaired and the whole back half of the house is coming down and will be out of action for a while. So, there you have it – Ferrymead is yet another place in the city that has been affected, directly, by the quake. They are covered by insurance and he was putting a good spin on it but you can see that it's hard for them to deal with and this is another place that could use our support.

The rest of the village is interesting as well, and the kids were particularly fascinated by the old school house, but what I found most interesting were the buildings at the far end of the park with a variety of different groups inhabiting them. My favourites of the day were the old hangars with some old planes (complete with a suitcase just like the one I used when I was a kid), the trolley buses (where they proudly showed us one of the three oldest operating trolley buses in the world along with a picture of what it looked like when they got it – they have done a lot of dedicated work fixing it up) and the model trains. My younger son is now absolutely besotted with trains of all sizes and shapes. The day we went, there were several people in the largest room working on the trains and scenery and we were able to go inside and see the trains right up close as well as bits of the scenery that are still being constructed. The guys in there were really knowledgeable and passionate about what they do and I was really happy with how nice they were to all my kids. If this place is open when you go it's definitely worth talking to these guys (and the trolley bus ones too) about what they do.

Other places to check into on Foursquare:

The paper a few days ago contained the welcome news that Cross Brothers butchery is re-opening in Sydenham. It's not close to Ferrymead, but as it was one of the businesses shutting its doors in the wake of the earthquake that inspired me to do this, I really feel the need to rejoice that it's on its way back. I remember shopping there years ago when my grandparents lived on that side of town and I remember it as a great place. When it comes back do go and support them as this is one piece of happy news among all the stories of businesses shutting down. While we're on the subject of Sydenham there's an art week from February 28 until March 5 which ends with a market day on March 5th. Since Sydenham has suffered pretty badly and is still one of the most damaged areas we should all get out and support those businesses during that week. I know I'll be there and I'd love to see some more of your smiling faces there with me.

Rediscovering Christchurch, Week Two

Victoria Street and Greening the Rubble.

First I need to reiterate that I am seriously out of touch with the city. After the last blog post I've had people ask 'have you really never been to COCA before?' The answer would be: no, I really haven't. As much as this project of mine is about supporting the parts of the city that have been affected by the earthquake, it is also about me literally reconnecting with a city I know very little about, despite having lived here for so long. So these first few weeks are likely to be focused in the central city. Today, for instance, I decided to take a wander along Victoria Street. There were three reasons for this – I wanted to take a look at the Greening the Rubble project, I wanted to visit the parts of this street I haven't spent much time in, and I wanted a close up look at all the holes. That sounds very negative, doesn't it? But it's fascinating to take a closer look at the way the city has changed.

The first thing I remember hearing about, knowing about on the day of the quake, was the loss of some facades on Victoria Street, so it seems fitting that the Greening the Rubble project should start there too. This new garden was really interesting. I found myself wishing that what they are creating could stay there. It really opens up that space and allows you to stand back, take a look around, and appreciate the buildings in that area. Standing on the other side of Salisbury Street and looking across the new garden to Victoria Street there's a lovely vista of buildings from a range of time periods - from what looks like an apartment block from sometime in the thirties, to the older brick shops that line the street, to the modern glass apartments behind them all. I took a picture, but alas it didn't come out. I'll try and get one and add it later.

I need to point out that I am someone who has been very concerned about the appearance of the buildings that will go in to replace the ones we've lost. I have been worried about the imposition of a modern 'look' onto the city's character background, and yet I found myself pleasantly surprised by how harmoniously the buildings in that area blend together from that angle. I do hope that in any planned rebuild attention is paid to the look of the buildings going into this mix. Victoria Street, as we all know, has a large number of holes, and even more bits shut off by fences and road cones. However, stand on Salisbury Street and take a look across the road. The damage is not really noticeable from that angle and this view is, like the turret at the Arts Centre, something we won't have the luxury of appreciating once the site is turned back to the developers and a new building goes in there. Take this opportunity while you can – and then pay attention to the garden that allows for that new view. It's a very pleasant spot, flowers have been sown in three large gardens which I'm sure will look fantastic once they come up, and the brick art about rebuilding 'brick by brick' is an inspiration. That's all we can do – but it's all we have to do.

I had my mother with me and she is particularly fascinated by the clock tower that stands on the corner of Victoria and Montreal Streets, so our next stop was to get personal with it; by which I mean that for the first time in my life I went under it and read the plaque that details its history. What I found inspirational about that was the way it has changed and moved over the years while still retaining its character. It may be completely different to the one that was erected somewhere entirely different in the 1800s, but it's still going strong. I like to think the same can be said for the city – that no matter how it's changed or broken it will still retain its character, still be Christchurch.

Walking the length of Victoria Street is also interesting. There are the holes, of course, but there's still a huge array of shopping to be done down there. In a quick count I saw shops selling German, Greek, Japanese, Thai and, of course, kiwi foods. I'm sure there were also others that I just didn't pay attention to. It's like its own wee microcosm of interesting food. Then as well as that there were a whole bunch of other shops including my favourite bookshop, the Childrens Bookshop (well, favourite equal if we count Scorpio Books) which I can never resist going into – and which everyone should visit if they happen to be on Victoria Street, even if they're not a child, because the atmosphere in there is just lovely. While you're there pop upstairs and see if the Te Tai Tamariki room is open – at the moment they have a display of the original art from Quaky Cat. Up close those pictures are glorious and they are selling signed prints of them which can be framed. I am very keen to go back and get myself one of those.

What I find fascinating about the spaces where the buildings are gone is just how small they look. This is particularly true of the Caxton Press building, which was remarkably tiny even for an empty space. Even in the larger spaces it feels like buildings must take up more than their allotted space psychologically for the holes left behind to seem so small by comparison. Interestingly, once they put down foundations for new buildings the spaces start to open up again and they don't seem so compact. I find the corner on Bealey Avenue the most depressing, what with all the scaffolding still up around so much down that end, and large number of broken and missing buildings, but a new beginning is already rising down there. There were men hard at work on the damaged buildings on the end and beside them in the hole left by The Daily Bagel etc are the foundations of something new. I miss that part of the street and the way it used to look, but I'm also excited to see what's growing up out of that rubble.

Other places to check into on Foursquare.

My mother's mission for today was to find a particular type of glass in an antique shop, so since I love antiques, I obligingly followed her into several of them. On Victoria Street alone there are at least two. Antique World, where we went first, couldn't help us. The woman who served us was lovely though and showed us how she was blu-tacking everything down now in case of another quake. The next place we tried was Wayne Wright Antiques. This shop has obviously been quite badly affected by the quake and is now squeezed into a couple of small rooms. His entry way is next to The Caxton Press. He has signs up to say you're allowed in but at first glance you'd think it was just a store room and not somewhere to go in and browse. Again, he didn't have what my mother wanted (he deals solely in furniture, which from what I could see looked just lovely) but he told us who would have what we were after. He was extremely nice, very helpful and if you're looking for some older furniture I'd definitely recommend supporting him. We left Victoria Street then and headed to Foragers on St Asaph, where we found what we were after, just like we'd been told. This is a shop filled mostly with crockery, glass etc, a bit of furniture and some old toys that had my mother in raptures remembering her childhood. Its stock ranges from antiques to reasonably modern and we spent a really enjoyable half hour poking around. If you like old fashioned or antique crockery, this definitely looks like the place to check in.

One final note – tomorrow is the Boxing Day Replay sales, so head into the central city and grab yourself a bargain.

Co-operation Makes It Happen!

This was one of my favourite Sesame Street songs when I was little; especially the next line: "Co-operation, working together. DIG IT!"

And that is precisely what I'm trying to do here, get Cantabrians working together to make it happen!

So on that note I'd like to announce some partnerships that 7point1squared is proud to be a part of:

4sqday!

As announced yesterday in #4sqchat, 7point1squared is an Official Partner of 4sqday! April 16th is an (unofficial) international celebration of Foursquare, with events organised in 250 cities in over 35 countries in 2010. This year the theme is "hyper-local" which I think is a fantastic theme to work in with 7point1squared. Big thanks to Nate, founder of 4sqday for inviting us to be a part of 4sqday 2011! Why April 16th? Because four squared is 16, ergo 4/16 = April 16th!

We've also joined forces with the great folks at Rebuild Christchurch, an awesome resource for all things earthquake related in Canterbury. Make sure you check your suburb's page and update any damage you know of! Chur Deon!

If you or your organisation think that a partnership could benefit us both, don't hesitate to contact or tweet me!

Rediscovering Christchurch, Week One

The Cultural Precinct

As I said in the introduction to this series, I am woefully ignorant of a lot of what this city has to offer. So I set out yesterday on a glorious Christchurch day, dragging a friend and my kids with me, to take a new look at the cultural precinct and specifically the COCA (Centre of Contemporary Art) which I had never been to before – in fact I never even knew it existed. I know parts of the cultural precinct really well, but last week I picked up a brochure aimed at tourists and realised just how much I have missed by not looking at the city as a tourist would – as a place worth exploring. So, my rediscovery of Christchurch is starting with our past – and with the artists of our present.

The COCA is tucked around the corner from the Christchurch Art Gallery, and close to a very handy underground car park. However, I didn't actually park there, but rather in the Botanic Gardens car park. It's free, it's in a really pretty setting and parking there allowed me to take a lovely stroll through the gardens, past many of our lovely heritage buildings to get to the COCA. I stopped at the Arts Centre mostly because I can't possibly go past there without buying a chocolate at the Fudge Cottage. It's a strange kind of feeling being in there post-quake. It is a beautiful, serene place even with the artisans and people who are always there in the cafes and shops. It feels intimate even though it's a lot bigger than I ever realised. There's also an odd kind of beauty in seeing the turret sitting on the footpath. This is a unique opportunity we have to see the stone work on that part of the building so close up. It still towers above you, the roof tiles still begin well above my head, and seeing it there so small next to its building, yet still so much bigger than me, gives a real sense of just how immense the building is. Take a good look at it when you go past – this new perspective on the building isn't an opportunity we'll have for all that long!

The COCA itself is a very small, intimate gallery with 3 rooms dedicated to showcasing the artwork of two or three artists. These works were fascinating and I could have spent a lot more time there than I did, mainly because I had children with me. (Protip #1 – don't take children with you. It's not really that sort of place and I don't think the people who run it were used to small, loud voices; and that's not to mention the issues I had with keeping small hands off the art). The rest of the art is in a couple of small rooms on wire frames. They move at will and it's fascinating to see a glimpse of something through the layers and pull the frames until you find the work itself. There's a real sense that each time you go back there the experience would be different even if all the art works remained the same. It is awkward to see everything you want to because of the small size of the building, but they have certainly utilised the space they have. It was definitely worth finding, even if it's not on the scale of the Christchurch Art Gallery which is so close by. They work well in tandem, though. Yesterday I started with the COCA and moved on to the Art Gallery, and found that worked well for me (and my kids). You start with the intimate and the new and move on to the larger scale, more open gallery which is more welcoming for our smaller citizens.

From the galleries we moved in to the Square to eat. The Town Crier was there letting everyone know of all the upcoming events (I'm looking forward to two things I haven't done before – Classical Sparks and the Festival of Flowers). It was fun to wander slowly around, taking in the market and listening to him. Hearing him was another thing I'd never done before (yay, two new experiences for the price of one!) and he really added to the atmosphere of the square. Again, this is a place I have often been guilty of seeing only for its faults. But when you stop to look deeper, the square is actually rather lovely. Yes, it's grey and could do with a bit more greenery, but it's not barren - not with all the people who were in there giving it life and vibrancy; and around the edges the buildings are worth noticing. Yesterday, instead of focusing at ground level, I finally lifted my eyes and paid attention to the architecture around me. It takes on a resonance now that we have the memories of bricks all over the streets, and those pictures of tumbled rubble around some of these buildings in the Square itself after Boxing Day. But despite those memories, the damage isn't all that apparent in the Square and it's another pleasant place to spend some time. I was there at lunchtime, and the busy-ness of ts stalls and the Town Crier were a nice contrast to the peace and intimacy of the Arts Centre.

As we walked down Worcester Boulevard, we took this picture and for me, it really sums up the Christchurch we have right now. There may be some wire fencing and scaffolding masking some of our city's beauty, but under it and behind it it's still lovely. Like many people post-quake, I have been guilty of seeing only the damage, the fencing, the long way we have to go to fix the city. But when you look, really look, behind those things, we still live in a lovely setting.

Other places to check in to on Foursquare:
Canterbury Cheesemongers at the Arts Centre. They have had a rough time of it after the quake when their premises were knocked down. They have finally reopened in the Arts Centre and it's well worth going to test out their lovely cheese and treat yourself to something wonderful. As an added bonus, the chilled room they keep the cheeses in is a wonderful place on a hot summer's day. I could have stayed there all day!

Actually, just make sure to check into all the places in the Arts Centre. As we know it took quite a beating in the earthquake, but for the most part it's back up and operating, and places like Le Cafe could do with a bit of love. I haven't been back there since the quake but do have some very fond memories of their hot chocolate. Go forth and check in on Foursquare!

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