Success inside Christchurch's Red Zone

It was my third foray into Christchurch’s earthquake-wrecked forbidden Red Zone to collect my daughter’s possessions from her High Street flat.

On February 22 she’d seen nearby buildings collapse on people and fled the central city with the clothes she was wearing, out of work, unable to resume studies.

This time our company included six Civil Defence staff and a couple of engineers – enough to convince the brooding presence of police patrols we were on official business.

We met the Civil Defence team in their camper van at an empty lot near the eastern cordon on Tuam Street. The four of us handed over photo identifications, to be returned after the mission, signed various forms, put on our hard hats and bright yellow and red jackets.

The young Civil Defence woman assembled us and an accompanying Asian family for a briefing. She laid down the rules (obey the Civil Defence guys). We didn’t tell her we’d been through all this before.

s she spoke, an aftershock rumbled under our feet and wildly vibrated the windows of nearby showrooms. We took bets it was only a 3 or 4 on the Richter scale.

Then the Civil Defence campervan led us in convoy. The soldiers at the cordon checked our credentials in a friendly way. My daughter’s cheerful chatter, honed in the restaurant trade, brightened their boring day.

A few more hundred metres and we were at the corner of High Street and Tuam overshadowed by broken buildings. Metal containers loomed in front of the wrecked McKenzie & Willis department store.

parrows chirped amid the distant rumble of the massive demolition trucks making their way out of town to the dump.

Ghostly apparitions of naked white mannequins swung silently in the wind in the broken shop frontage of Plume boutique, a symbol of this awesome event that will overhang our city for a generation.

Our Civil Defence engineers entered the stairwell to the second level apartment, relishing the action, talking into their radios. They returned to the street and told us not to linger in certain parts of the building and not to rush out under the unstable parapets if another quake struck – just stay at the rear of the building until it passes.

For the next 30 minutes we carried down the bric a brac of domestic life and stashed it on the trailer. I stood for a few moments to take more photos of busted stuff spilling onto deserted streets. The leaning Hotel Grand Chancellor a block away seemed to sway, the sun sparkling off cracked windows.

The convoy was joined by two more Civil Defence vehicles. We drove a block towards Colombo Street, past the trashed SOL Square entertainment precinct – despite bankrupt developer Dave Henderson’s assurances to me that he could get it up and running in days (who wants to sit and sip wine in a lane surrounded by brick buildings again?).

It was the Asian family’s turn to recover their gear. They entered their sex shop to retrieve goodness knows what. They didn’t seem like porno people. More like the respectable tourist families we’re accustomed to. We took more photos of retail stock stashed in rooms without walls.

Then we were off. A few hundred metres out of the cordon and back at the empty lot we exchanged the safety gear for our identifications, thanked the Civil Defence folks and headed away.

The operation had gone well and we felt good. I’d had little faith it would go better than our first mission two weeks ago. We’d gone through the registration rigmarole at the Civil Defence headquarters at the Art Gallery, driving the circuitous route around closed roads. As advised, we employed an engineer. He had gone in first, declared it safe, and we quickly removed furniture to my waiting trailer, getting about half the gear out.

But then the blue uniform arrived, ordering us outside for a stern lecture. The building was red stickered he declared. We explained that was why we employed an engineer and that the building was only red stickered because of damage to neighbouring buildings. Nor did my daughter’s arguments that she had already been in the flat twice in recent weeks (after charming the more malleable army lads) make a difference.

There was clearly a huge disconnect between Civil Defence at headquarters and police on the beat who had one imperative – lock down, and treat anyone within the Red Zone as a potential looter.

We’d had similar experiences in an even earlier attempt when we were also armed with the necessary documents. The soldiers seemed agreeable and so did one of the policemen but they were quickly overruled by a do-it-by-the-book police officer.

The heavy police presence has prevented looting. But at the cost of goodwill. Stories of overbearing behaviour are common. Two security men spent a night in the cells recently for allegedly failing to have necessary security documents. Bars on the periphery of the central city routinely enjoy three to four visits from large police teams during evenings. And the council has bowed to requests for a ban on alcohol in public places in Riccarton and Papanui.

Little wonder that inviting friends over for dinner is de rigeur when faced with the hassles of going out.

For their part, bars and restaurants that have survived are enjoying a booming trade, some of them employing a few of the thousands of laid off hospitality staff.