Counting the emotional cost of moving out and moving on
building materials, height and reclaimed land.
Like Peter Smith, Grafton wants legislators to think beyond simply preserving lives when it comes to setting building code requirements.
‘‘How do we engineer for the future, to make those buildings more resilient and functional post an event, rather than a total loss?’’
Morag Hatcher, Soho Apartments
For six years, Morag Hatcher enjoyed her Soho apartment’s good, easy living. She’d weathered the Christchurch earthquakes, but the November shake was something else. She rolled out of bed and watched the plaster cracks forming.
Her pictures were secured with 3M hooks – one got wrenched out and thrown from the lounge to the kitchen. Her perfume bottles flew out of the medicine cabinet and smashed on the floor; the fridge door defied its tight seal and emptied its contents. Other casualties included knick-knacks given to her by family who had since died.
She waited half an hour, before calling a friend in the Hutt. She was out of there, past water raining down from a burst pipe.
When she moved back in a week later, the usually still dreamcatcher in her bedroom heralded every aftershock.
‘‘It would sway in high winds, and creak, and you’d be like – is that the wind, or is that an earthquake coming? ... For me, for my wellbeing, it was like, the stress. Nah.’’
She moved out in December. Finding somewhere to rent was a nightmare – everyone seemed to be moving. She finally settled on the bottom flat in a two-storey unit in the Hutt.
‘‘I would never go into a big high rise like Soho again. Never. It’s just not worth it.’’
Rob Zorn, Maison Cabriole Apartments
After two and a half months exiled from his life’s contents, Rob Zorn left nothing to chance. Like a supermarket dash winner, he spent hours planning his 10-minute escorted access into his quake-evacuated apartment.
He would gather his businesscritical desktop computer, while his friend would grab his $300 in cash, the much-missed Nespresso machine and clothes to supplement his two work jackets.
Zorn was evacuated from his Maison Cabriole apartment four days after the quake, over fears the neighbouring Reading Cinema car park could collapse. Told they would be out for 12-48 hours, he grabbed a couple of T-shirts and his laptop.
Forty-eight hours became four months and it’s hard to explain how absolutely awful that was, Zorn says. The dislocation, the stress, the financial hit.
Normally, Zorn runs his communications company from home. Instead, a friend’s kitchen table became his office. He was also carless – his BMW was among nine cars trapped in the condemned car park, complete with presents for his grandchildren. Because the car hadn’t actually been destroyed, his insurance company initially refused to pay out. After a month of wasting hours catching buses to business meetings, Zorn bought a runabout, before the insurance payout eventually came through.
He found a flat after an American friend saw a Stuff story about his plight, and offered his vacant apartment. But that left Zorn paying rent plus his mortgage and body corporate fees for an apartment he couldn’t access. The body corporate insurance covered the rent, but only 75 per cent. Together with lost business, he estimates the fourmonth exile cost him about $15,000 in business and $5000 in extra expenses.
‘‘It was extremely stressful. I went through a long period where I just couldn’t sleep. I just had the worries – the finances, the money I was losing; feeling displaced. It was frustrating, too, that I could see my building was OK.’’
Zorn doesn’t blame council officials, who were trying their best, but says earlier escorted access would have made a huge difference.
Now, whenever there’s a quake, he’s terrified there’ll be a guy in a yellow jacket at the door. Nonetheless, he has no plans to move.
‘‘It’s made me slightly more aware that there is a risk, especially living in a high-rise building. But it’s a risk I’m willing to take, simply because of the joy of living in the central city, which I absolutely love.’’