Rebuilding Christchurch

MANILA, Philippines - One recent morning on the beach at Sumner Village in Christchurch, a woman tossed a wooden branch into the water. Her Golden Retriever happily ran after it, sloshing in the water and returning the branch to her.

As pet and human did this over and over, a small group of residents pulled out weeds nearby, apparently preparing a spot for landscaping. The beach is separated from the road by a concrete island and a strip of subtropical succulents.

My companion and I followed arrows written in colored chalk on the sidewalk, across the road and into a house where several items were on sale for the day.

The chalk come-ons, easily erased and leaving no trash, are common in Christchurch. I saw several more arrows written in multicolored chalk, leading to cafés in the upscale community nestled around the bottom of the hill. The arrows grab the attention of their target market: health-conscious joggers, animal lovers walking their dogs, and ordinary strollers enjoying the midmorning sun and bracing breeze from the South Pacific.

As in other clean and green cities, walking is enjoyable around Christchurch. It is particularly pleasant in Sumner Village, a beachfront enclave with a hillside community overlooking the sea.

Large gashes on the hillside, like scars from a grievous wound, remind visitors of the tragedy that befell Christchurch on Feb. 22 last year. At 12:51 p.m. on that day, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake rocked the city, shaking up the ground and structures already weakened by a magnitude 7.1 quake that struck on Sept. 4, 2010. Cliff faces around Sumner collapsed.

The quake in 2011 was followed by seemingly endless aftershocks. By the time the worst was over, 80 percent of the city’s Central Business District was destroyed, and 185 lives were lost. That’s an enormous toll for a city with a population of just 350,000. Nearly half of the fatalities were trapped in the six-story Canterbury TV building when it collapsed and caught fire; among those killed were 11 Filipinos.

Officially established in July 1856, Christchurch is New Zealand’s oldest city, and the quake left many of the old structures in ruins. The 19th century neo-Gothic Anglican Christ Church, the city’s landmark in Cathedral Square, was flattened.

Today the city is just starting on the long, slow road to rebuilding. Sluggish processing of insurance claims, and indecision on whether to restore or build completely new structures in place of the ruined ones including the Anglican church, have slowed down reconstruction. About 1,320 buildings will have to come down.

“The opportunity is being taken to build a new central city, you know, that has more heart to it,” Michelle Mitchell, general manager for community wellbeing of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority told me.

But even with many storefronts shuttered and abandoned homes lying forlorn amid overgrown gardens, Christchurch, once one of New Zealand’s most popular tourist destinations, has retained much of its charm.

The city’s unique appeal starts at the airport, where giant penguin statues direct visitors to the International Antarctic Center. Christchurch is in New Zealand’s South Island, whose southern seaport town of Bluff, home of the eponymous oyster, is just 2,550 kilometers from Antarctica’s George V eastern land coast.

Much of Christchurch is flatland, making it seem deceptively small. The city is full of parks, rivers and streams, where I spotted black swans together with ducks beneath weeping willows. The entire city seems like a bird sanctuary; I saw a lot of sea birds, blackbirds and wading birds.

For visitors, accommodations may be a problem. The quake destroyed many of the city’s motels – the popular lodging facility in Christchurch. But more and more motels are reopening; just make sure to confirm a reservation before visiting.

The typical house in the city has a manicured lawn, with a garden bursting with all colors of rhododendrons at the time of my visit. In the affluent hillside neighborhoods, with their winding roads and spectacular view, some houses have their own cable cars.

Among the most affluent Kiwis are those in the dairy industry. Milk is New Zealand’s white gold. Christchurch is a gateway to Canterbury, a picturesque region of pastureland where there seem to be cattle and sheep, with a smattering of alpaca, as far as the eye can see. Fresh milk is transported in this region by tankers.

The snow-capped Southern Alps and Mt. Cook provide a majestic backdrop to the idyllic scenery. The dairy farms and milk processing centers of Canterbury were not destroyed by the quake.

Most of the farms sell their milk to New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra, a cooperative of 10,500 farmer shareholders. A smaller company, Synlait, is specializing in nutritional milk products such as infant formula, milk for pregnant and lactating women and the elderly.

In Christchurch, rebuilding is creating new areas that are drawing visitors even to the worst hit, cordoned-off area dubbed the Red Zone.

At the old Start Market within the Red Zone, a commercial area fashioned out of shipping containers, called Re:Start, has risen from the ruins of the earthquake. Local “entrepreneurial” artists painted the containers, which house cafés, health food stores, souvenir shops, and clothing outlets offering branded imports and New Zealand’s own top-of-the-line apparel.

Visitors can dine al fresco amid potted lavender. There’s brick oven-baked pizza and New Zealand’s ubiquitous milk shops.

Some Kiwis told me they preferred the trendiness of the new area to the old neighborhood, which they said was starting to go to seed.

Over at Sumner, shipping containers serve a different purpose. Several, also featuring local artwork, line the bottom of cliffs where the quake had sliced out large chunks. Since February 2011, Christchurch has been hit by 11,000 aftershocks, with about 50 measuring over 5 in the Richter scale, and the tremors have not stopped – another reason why insurance processing is moving at a snail’s pace.

At Sumner Village, homeowners are pondering proposals to replace their beachfront houses with new structures designed to be more resilient during earthquakes.

After the earthquake last year, the village, about 12 kilometers from the city center, was likened to a ghost town in news reports, with its little shops and eateries shuttered.

Last month the local council approved a draft master plan for rebuilding the village center.

As a temporary measure, the shipping containers lie at the base of the cliffs, to prevent mud and rocks dislodged by aftershocks from spilling over into the road.

Damage control, coping with continuing aftershocks, rebuilding – Christchurch is slowly but surely rising from the ashes, ready to welcome visitors again.