It’s now 784 days since the February 2011 earthquake.
Winter is coming.
And nothing is happening.
It didn’t have to be this way.
“We have a great big mess of interconnected problems. The root of most of them is a fundamental lack of respect for individual property rights.”
Read Eric Crampton’s “Oh Christchurch” for the litany of what’s happening in Christchurch (short summary: bugger all), and why not (short summary: regime uncertainty).
Here’s Tall Dwarfs:
2 comments:
After a year and something, we finally have been contacted about our EQC claim (for our house in Diamond Harbour, Christchurch).
Although contact is a silly word. Out of the blue we simply received a cheque for what they think will fix our property. In reality, the cheque would barely cover the repaint that will be necessary once we fix all the problems with it: cladding coming off south side, kitchen now an inch from the wall, kitchen bench at far end in the air, cracks every where, top of a three panel ranchslider fallen out ... etc, etc. There was no consultation, not seeking of our agreement or signature. Nothing.
After a phone call, we have this morning mailed the cheque back to EQC saying we don't accept it. So, I guess now we either 'opt in' for Fletcher rebuild, or go to war, or something. Wouldn't have a clue just yet: going through all the options.
It's only a pity we aren't over the $100,000 level, then we could have been dealing with our private insurer, which would have been a far better option.
Some stuff is going on. They've fixed a lot of sewer lines and a lot of streets. There's still much to be done, but they've made some progress on that. And they've torn down a lot of buildings, many of which did need to come down. And some rebuilding is happening outside of downtown.
If you lived on the west side of town near the University, and if you didn't need to go downtown for anything, you might not notice that there had been an earthquake.
But the bigger picture is rather depressing.
Post a Comment