Christchurch 3 Years After the Earthquake!

Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament – July 2013

I am new in town and one of the first tourist attraction I did with my kids was the “CBD RED ZONE TOUR” in Christchurch”.

Today I will talk about this tour and how Christchurch changed after the earthquake, what has been done and what not but my main point is, introducing this city in the year 2013. One of the local newspaper mention that in many articles around the world about Christchurch photos are used from pre-earthquake time and the questions was: Has the world forgotten about the earthquake in Christchurch?

1 month prior to the earthquake in Japan the earthquake in Christchurch happened. Eye witnesses said you could not stand. The shaking was enormous. Some told me that objects were literally thrown into the air and fell down one or two meter from it`s original point down. After hearing all the story I thought it is maybe a good thing to take the tour, although at first I thought it might be boring. The tour guide had so many stories to tell and we saw so much that we loved it, so interesting.

In the past week we cycled through Christchurch and I took several photos outside the red zone areas as well. The photo above shows how the Cathedral looks before and after. In the past months we had some earthquakes in New Zealand but we felt almost nothing, luckily, except one.

CBD Red Zone Tour (on the left Hagley Park)

Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament – July 2013

On the right side the container are supporting the building. When I stand in front of this huge building I was shocked. Such an immense and how it looks like stable building. This at the end gave me an idea of how strong this earthquake was.

MEMORIAL

The arrow shows where the CTV building was standing

Earthquake memorial from Peter Majendie

185 EMPTY CHAIRS

This chairs are representing the people who lost their life. I really love this idea. This memorial is at the corner Cashel Street / Madras Street.The artist Peter Majendie created this memorial. I got goose bumps, because the former CTV building is just across the road. I do not have any picture of it but on this link you can take a look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CTV_Building

On youtube has many videos from this day, one example here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BynOX9fj07o

There are many websites were eyewitnesses telling their story.

http://www.quakestories.govt.nz

The following photos telling the story as well: