PART 2
SHOWER CITY is any part of Christchurch where you can take a hot shower, because you have electricity and running water and mostly-working sewer lines. By latest estimates, that's about 65% of the city -- much of it out west.
In that part of Christchurch, tired people are getting on with life -- though some may be wondering if they still have a job. And a few of them with energy and time to spare are wondering if they can do more to help the rest of the city.
The media naturally lives in Shower City, and they talk almost exclusively to the business leaders and the Rescue City leadership who also inhabit it.
REFUGEE CITY is the rest of Christchurch -- mainly the eastern suburbs, though there are pockets elsewhere. It includes perhaps 50,000 to 100,000 people, though a more-mobile chunk of them may have self-evacuated by now.
Only half of those who remain in Refugee City have power, and almost NONE have running water. Many have been living on their own resources, and their neighbours', for over a week now.
That means that batteries have run down, gas (if they had any to start with) has run out, other supplies are low or gone. Roads are often very bad - and a lot of those from the poorer suburbs have no transport anyway.
Their houses may or may not be intact. Their streets may be clear, broken, or full of silt. Or sewage. There are no showers. Or ways to wash clothes. Or to wash dishes. Or to heat the "must boil" water
that is available -- assuming they can make it to the nearest water truck, day after day. No refrigeration. No working toilets, and precious few portaloos.
No internet either, and often no phones. And their radio batteries are dead or dying. The papers - if you can get one - are rapidly dated, and usually far too general in their coverage. It really doesn't help someone without a car in Aranui to know that Fisher and Paykel are providing free laundries in Kaiapoi!
All the above means the locals have few resources, little information, and no "voice" either. It's remarkably hard to call talkback radio - or your local politician - or emergency services -
when your landline is out and your cellphone battery is dead. Or when it maybe has JUST enough charge to stay on hold for 5 minutes - but not 20! - when calling the sole government helpline.
The media flies over, drives past and dips into Refugee City, usually at the main welfare or water points. But they don't cover it that much. From my observations, the officials - those who are making
decisions about the relief effort - seem to do likewise. (We saw Opposition Leader Phil Goff the other day - he stopped for a photo op with the Army group who had paused briefly at the cordon.
Not that he or they talked to any of the locals waiting amidst they dust they'd stirred up, hoping for a nugget of information.)
Judging from the media coverage to date, the official response in this part of the city sounds reassuring - "Relief Centres" (if you can get to them -- and if it hasn't been relocated to Rangiora), a
field hospital (ditto), Army (two drive-bys in the past week), "Operation Suburbs" teams (ditto; and this whole area is not even listed with them), increased police presence thanks to 300 loaned
Australians (some sign of them, but not enough). And some worthy and welcome images of food and other supplies being distributed at marae and other central points.
IN THESE POWERLESS SUBURBS, THE OFFICIAL RESPONSE IS FAR FROM ENOUGH.
Especially in terms of the fundamentals.
I come from a relatively well-off area - most of its folk were better prepared than average for something like this - good supplies of food, water, batteries, BBQs and the like.
But even here, by the weekend, many people were bailing -- mainly because of lack of information about how to survive here any longer. Their only contact with officialdom was being pushed from pillar to post by often-unnecessary (and though they didn't know it at the time, temporary) evacuations, conducted by police who were doing their best, but who themselves were overworked and under-informed.
Such actions considerably eroded local confidence, especially when there was also no clear information about when power or water would return locally.
My family's local response to that situation can be seen at
http://webcentre.co.nz/quake.htm - NOT the web page itself, but the physical noticeboard and printed newsletters and, especially, the
local volunteers and extensive human contact and moral support which it represents.
Basically, we started making stone soup, and our neighbours and fellow citizens contributed the other ingredients. And for this suburb -- though not for everyone in it -- the acute phase has now
passed, because more than half of us at least have electricity now. THANK YOU ORION.
But all that was ONLY possible because our family had the personal security, skills, communication equipment, stationery (pens, paper, cards, bulldog clips, noticeboard), chutzpah and, above all,
electricity -- "borrowed" from a cellsite generator -- to make it happen. And also a couple of family members outside the city willing to be gofers for information and key supplies.
