Last weekend, I was in Christchurch. All through the city I saw flyers posted up
on every second lamp post and power pole.
“Rally for the Cathedral. Save
our heritage” they boldly proclaimed.
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| Christ Church Cathedral Before |
For those who don’t know the story, the Christ Church Cathedral
was badly damaged in the earthquakes on February 22nd 2011. The spire came down and a good portion of the
interior collapsed. At the time, it was
believed that up to 12 people were trapped inside and it was frequently shown
on the news with the Search and Rescue teams trying to make it safe to enter
and search for survivors. None were
found, alive or dead.
The decision has been made to demolish the Cathedral. This iconic part of the Christchurch skyline
has already become almost unrecognisable and there are plans for a temporary
‘Cardboard Cathedral’ to be erected and serve the Anglican diocese until the
earthquakes stop and a new cathedral can be safely built.
As I understand it, demolition has begun, but it is being
hampered by prominent local politicians who are also heritage campaigners. I saw one on the news, waxing lyrical over a
piece of window frame and how it should all be saved.
It would seem that she’s not alone. Several thousand turned out for this rally
according to this article in The Press. The article also reports a poll that
was taken to judge public support for or against demolishing the Cathedral with
54% supporting demolition and 42% against.
In recent years, several million dollars were spent on the
Cathedral, including earthquake strengthening. This was widely bandied about as ‘what a
relief it had been done and the Cathedral stood up to the 7.1 Earthquake of
September 4th 2010.’ The Cathedral still came down a short 6 months
later in the February quake. Earthquake
strengthening didn’t make a difference to the Cathedral then.
Christchurch continues to be rocked by aftershocks. Every few months there is one large enough to
jam the mobile phone networks as everyone is checking up on loved ones. In the CBD red zone, still mostly closed to
the public, demolition and clean up is still taking place. These tremors sometimes cause more damage to
these buildings waiting their turn. The
lives of the workers in the city are consistently at risk.
So I have to ask, who in their right mind puts a building
ahead of lives? Every day that this
structure still stands is another day that could contain another decent
aftershock and cause it to fall. What of
the lives of the teams that would be painstakingly removing each individual
history-filled stone? I’m sure their
families would be ever so proud that they gave their lives to save a pretty
window arch for a city councillor who isn’t in there risking her life alongside
them. At least the three men who died in
the Methodist Church on Durham Street were there by choice to try and save the
pipe organ.
It’s our heritage and our history people tell me. I wasn’t aware that our entire heritage and
history were contained in this one building.
It’s not as though pulling it down will suddenly automatically delete all
memory of it from us, the photographs won’t suddenly go blank, the cheap tacky
tourist souvenir tea towels and coffee mugs will still have images of the
Cathedral on them. The destruction
caused by the earthquakes are our history now too.
Take a look at Napier.
The earthquake in 1931 only just tops the February quake for being the
most destructive in New Zealand history.
Napier was destroyed, and rebuilt in the time’s current fashion Art Deco
style. Now, Napier is a tourist
attraction for that reason, many people go to Napier just to see all the Art
Deco buildings.
I’ve heard it suggested that the Cathedral be rebuilt, just
the same as the old one, using the same materials. As mentioned before, the Cathedral had
undergone earthquake strengthening and came down anyway so wouldn’t rebuilding
it in the same style mean that we’d be building an unsafe building in an
earthquake prone area? Am I really the
only person to see the flaws in this? Is
sentimentality a good enough reason to put more lives at risk? Don’t get me wrong, I loved the Cathedral,
not for any spiritual reasons but because it was a beautiful old building in
the centre of the city. However, as it
stands now and rebuilding it just the same make it a death-trap and I believe
that people need to understand this.
Doing the same thing but expecting different results was a foolish
behaviour trait that I thought most of us grew out of in our teens. A building in Rangiora was built at the same
time to the same plans as the PGG building that collapsed and killed many in
the February quake. It has been closed
and I imagine it will be some time before it is reopened, if ever. It shows almost no damage, but because an
identical structure proved to be so lethal, common sense has prevailed (here at
least).
The Cathedral draws thousands of tourists every year. They come to Christchurch to see the
Cathedral, it’s like Sydney’s Opera House and Harbour Bridge or the Coliseum in
Rome. I’m sorry, what? Yes, tourists come to see the Cathedral, but
it’s not the whole point of the trip. They
come to see much more than just one building.
Having worked in hospitality, I found that the Cathedral was mostly a “while
we’re in town we might as well see it” option rather than being the main focus
for the visit.
When I first floated this rant on facebook, a comment was
made about how much CERA and EQC are mucking people around, paying their ‘professionals’
far too much when they clearly can’t agree with one another and the same jobs
need to be revisited and redone constantly.
After the September 2010 earthquake, Mayor Bob Parker created a Mayoral
fund for earthquake relief. The money
seems to be gone. Getting new insurance
policies is extremely difficult in Christchurch, and existing policies are
going up by 25% each year. The money is
gone. A personal friend has spent much
of the past 18 months working on the roading and landscape cleanup crews, he
told me that after the December 23rd 2011 aftershocks, they were
told to do the bare minimum because there wasn’t the money to do the proper
work – the work that had already been done three or four times over but kept
getting destroyed because the underlying problems (like broken sewers under the
roads) weren’t fixed first and because there are still consistent aftershocks.
So where would the extra money for the rebuild and
restoration come from? The Cathedral is
apparently not insured for enough to cover what it would cost. How many people would be willing to forgo
their own home repairs or insurance payouts to rebuild the Cathedral? Would they be willing or able to finance it
themselves? I would rather see homes,
schools, hospitals and workplaces repaired and restored first.
A comment I recall seeing said “if they can rebuild the
sports stadium, they can rebuild the Cathedral.
Surely the Spiritual deserves just as much as the sports.” Fair enough, but just who is this “they”
being talked about. AMI
stadium/Lancaster Park (for the diehards) is sponsored by some large companies
with plenty of capital to put forward. They get to have their names plastered all
over their stands and mentioned throughout events. There is no omnipotent “they” who control
everything. I’ve never heard of a Paul
Kelly stand inside a Church, any Church, and the level of outrage that would
follow if such a thing were even suggested is unimaginable.
The Anglican Church (who owns the Cathedral and the land it
stands on) would prefer to spend their money on people, on the poor and needy
in our city rather than a building. They’ve
held a number of open air services which have been well received. Who really has the right to tell them that
they’re doing it wrong? I know that
those living in the Western Suburbs of Christchurch who may have lost a couple
of coffee mugs and have a crack in the plaster of their lounge can never
understand the plight of the struggling families who are still paying a
mortgage on a home that they can’t live in as well as rent for their current
accommodation – even if that is a caravan.
The financial help for those families ran out a while ago.
Even if some Angel Investor type philanthropist did cough up
the money for it, no one can say for sure when or even if the land will become
stable again. Looking through the
history, Christchurch has always suffered earthquakes. 20 years ago I had a flatmate who used to
come out of her room at least once every 2 months and ask if we’d all felt the
earthquake. The experts are quite open
about having no idea what will happen.
All the rules that they had previously thought governed seismic activity
have been broken, there is no pattern to follow or expect. No one can say for sure whether or not we can
expect this to settle in five years or ten or even twenty. Until the land is stable, why would you risk
it?
I get that for many people the Cathedral was a symbol for
the city. That they feel to be without
it is to be a body without a heart. But
that heart is dying and dangerous. Hanging onto it will cause more of the body to
sicken and potentially die. Trying to
keep as much as possible the way it used to be is folly. Nothing is the same anymore, and it’s time we
figured that out.
Photo Credit: Christ Church Cathedral Before - Maree Reveley
