Survivors are heroes too

The instinctive courage of heroes in the midst of a disaster invites immediate admiration. The careworn courage that is demanded, sometimes daily, of survivors tends to draw little more than sympathy. It shouldn’t be so.

Eight years after the Canterbury earthquakes much will be said, and rightly, of the bravery that shone through the carnage at the time. The subsequent resilience of the community will also be acknowledged.

And yet, for many of those who live daily with the aching consequences of the quakes, it may be hard to receive with good grace spasmodic expressions of empathy from outsiders whose attention has been drawn by a date on a calendar and reminder in the news cycle of the day that ceremonies have been held.

These thousands find not just their patience, their stamina, but their courage is still taxed. For some occasionally. For many, naggingly. For some all-but-continuously.

They need no reminders of the trauma of the quakes themselves, or the immutable losses felt by those left bereft. They know the extent to which things could have been worse. But those living in corroded circumstances continue to endure much. For so many of them, an anniversary speaks more about what is still left unremedied, or perhaps worsened, than what has been achieved.

There’s no great harm in them hearing from others that they too have been brave. So much better, however, if they are able to recognise it in themselves. It might not be a particular comfort but it’s probably something they owe themselves, even so. Many of those still standing now, had they been able to see amid the immediate aftermath how very hard the road ahead would be, may have fled or retreated in despair.

Take just a single example. The bill to establish the Canterbury Earthquakes Insurance Tribunal is to make binding decisions on ‘‘straightforward’’ quake claim disputes. So eight years on, it still takes an initiative to put to rest contentions that could be described as ‘‘straightforward’’?

Yes, this reflects the extent to which problems emerged over time – another quake cruelty, to be sure.

The formal commemoration at the Canterbury Earthquake National Memorial is planned to be a low-key event and that will strike most people as appropriate.

Canterbury cannot move on from the need to acknowledge the human loss and consequences. And, though it can take an effort of will, it’s right to look squarely at the progress that has been made and to acknowledge the achievement. But there are also protests and these, too, have legitimacy. The passage of years has been pocked with infuriations that need to be vented.

Here is yet another way that the quakes have tested community wellbeing. The failings of the commercial and governmental world that they have exposed are such that rightful anger is only healthy. The real risk can be that over time this leads so an abiding, generalised, sourness and bitterness. Fending off that damaging descent is, itself, an achievement that Cantabrians do well to identify as such.

But it’s hard. So hard you could almost call it heroic.

So eight years on, it still takes an initiative to put to rest contentions that could be described as ‘‘straightforward’’?