Sunday 27 February 2011

Christhcurhc Earthquake Day 4 - The recovery Continues


If you have been following our homepage you will notice that I omitted 1 point from yesterday’s blog – we have water!  The first drips appeared Thursday night only to dry up again Friday morning.  By Friday afternoon ½ the rooms had water and by late last night all had at least a trickle.  An important step.

We now need the gas so we can have hot water but this may take some time due to our proximity to the centre of town.  The plan is to have hot water flowing on Monday.
Hopefully it’ll work!


I also omitted mentioning yesterday that we were visited by the Fire Department.  They were going door to door making sure everyone was ok.  On top of that, this morning we were visited by the City Council for our building inspection.  2 council employees and 2 structural engineers spent about 10 minutes here checking the building for safety.  We were awarded (??) a green “safe to use” certificate.  Stuck to the window with colour coordinated red tape, we are prevented by law from removing it.  So there it will stay.  So the good news is that our building is safe!

We were talking about it tonight but these 2 visits show how well organised the disaster response is.  By dividing the city into manageable areas, the council is able to quickly work out just what is happening.

In a matter of days, our motel has morphed from a popular tourist base close to Christchurch's heart to an emergency/recovery support centre.  This has changed the flow of what we have been doing completely.

Many people have been contacting us asking what they should be doing with their booking.  It’s a really tough call because the situation is so fluid.  It may change, it may not.  All we can recommend is that you wait a few days and see what is happening before you make your decision.  Being inside the cordon we are not the best place to be as you options will be severely limited

I’d like to write more but exhaustion has got me nodding off as I write this.  Must be away and get some sleep…more tomorrow.


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