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Awrrr
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#2275081 12-Jul-2019 09:44

How do we compare to Japan? Their disaster made ours look like peanuts. I get the impression (admittedly from the media, at a distance) that they are a lot further along than we are at fixing things.

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#2275088 12-Jul-2019 10:02

Rikkitic:

How do we compare to Japan? Their disaster made ours look like peanuts. I get the impression (admittedly from the media, at a distance) that they are a lot further along than we are at fixing things.

Not sure what the comparison would serve to prove? They are a country who have a long history of earthquakes, their infrastructure is designed around it, and their recovery processes are too.

One year coming back from a Ski trip, we were at Tokyo airport during what I considered to be a quite reasonable quake. My wife and I took our then 7 month old Son and bolted for cover, and the locals were most amused, most having not even noticed the significant swaying.

One kind man came over to us and assured us to be unconcerned and we were actually pretty safe in that building :)

Fred99

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#2275091 12-Jul-2019 10:09

I hope there's not a next time. If there is anything like the scale of ChCh again, then I'm sure that the reinsurers will pull out of offering NZ natural disaster cover. Brownlee did some deal with them - he flew to London where they had an annual conference attended by all the European reinsurers. The local insurers got a high court ruling that each aftershock was to be treated as a separate claim, that increased exposure to EQC and decreased exposure to the insurers, as over-cap claims could be apportioned / split, EQC was on a mission not to pass over cap claims on to insurers, but to keep the claims all EQC's liability by apportioning the claims. The reinsurers indicated that they'd been let down by NZ governments not increasing EQC cover to compensate for increase in building (repair) costs. In most cases there was no evidence from which to apportion damage. EQC didn't appeal. Reinsurers are a cartel - they get together routinely and collude. Insurers are exempt from parts of the CGA and FTA.

Without natural disaster insurance, NZ would have been in very deep crap. Half a trillion dollars worth of mortgage loans would instantly be worse than "sub-prime", the entire property market would collapse.

Gerry probably did the right thing there. Longer term, we'll see. Reinsurers are calling the shots, and bit by bit, access to insurance is becoming more difficult (and more expensive). Throw in consequence of sea-level rise, better understanding of previously underestimated tsunami threat, more frequent extreme weather events, I have little doubt that for many NZers, comprehensive home insurance is either going to be unaffordable or unavailable.

tdgeek

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#2275092 12-Jul-2019 10:10

networkn:

In an ideal world all repairs would have been done to the highest possible standard, they would have taken their time, and a qualified supervisor would have been involved and a happy client sign off would have been required. In reality, they had thousands upon thousands of repairs to complete, not nearly enough people, let alone supervisors, and had they have taken the time to do a great job, there would still be many people more waiting for their repairs to be done.

I can totally understand why anyone would be unhappy with that quality of work, but realistically, I am unsure how it would have been possible to do it and still meet everyones expectation of repair timeframes as well. As it was a lot of people had to wait far too long.

It's not really fair to compare private renovation to this I don't think.

I didnt expect a top notch architect managed job. What I quoted was basic stuff, little extra time needed. The house next door had the cracks repaired correctly. In my house they scoped to repair (rake/fill/paint) So they decided not to repair but did not tell me. If what I quoted would have taken 100% longer and more cost, but no, little extra or no extra. Adding the skirting back 8mm above? No extra there, just very very poor workmanship, in fact I would not even call that workmanship, an idiot would not have done that. The painters? Did a very good job, they were professionals , but many jobs were seemingly done by idiots and the project manager supported coverups. yes, a lot of houses to deal with, and that took a long tome to get round to ours and others ,we accept that. I even told the person that called for our first of three, no rush, make me low priority.

Kaikoura, cracks in three rooms, not much really. They dont repair anymore, gave me a cheque for $7000. To repair and paint three rooms, I'm in the wrong business!

tdgeek

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#2275097 12-Jul-2019 10:16

Fred99:

I hope there's not a next time. I

They say Chch is good for 10,000 years. Might be unknown faults. But the Alpine Fault is overdue, its also quite regular

It won't be too bad in ChCh. Maybe 8.5 there, 7.5 here, thats Max. We lost our old buildings, so what's left I feel is pretty darn capable. I believe you're in Clifton Hill? Yes, that's another issue clearly. Us flatties will generally be ok

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#2275141 12-Jul-2019 10:29

tdgeek:

I didnt expect a top notch architect managed job. What I quoted was basic stuff, little extra time needed. The house next door had the cracks repaired correctly. In my house they scoped to repair (rake/fill/paint) So they decided not to repair but did not tell me. If what I quoted would have taken 100% longer and more cost, but no, little extra or no extra. Adding the skirting back 8mm above? No extra there, just very very poor workmanship, in fact I would not even call that workmanship, an idiot would not have done that. The painters? Did a very good job, they were professionals , but many jobs were seemingly done by idiots and the project manager supported coverups. yes, a lot of houses to deal with, and that took a long tome to get round to ours and others ,we accept that. I even told the person that called for our first of three, no rush, make me low priority.

Kaikoura, cracks in three rooms, not much really. They dont repair anymore, gave me a cheque for $7000. To repair and paint three rooms, I'm in the wrong business!

Look, I am in now way suggesting what you got was a good quality job, and I am trying my best to not step on toes discussing the issues you and Fred99 (and many others) had, because, you guys experienced it, and I didn't personally (Though I had a lot of family and friends affected).

I guess I am saying it's unsurprising (to me) that there were a reasonable number of substandard jobs done by substandard people, because in my view, they were so desperate to get things moving and there just wasn't enough people. Good companies were hiring warm bodies to meet deadlines and the pressure was immense on everyone. We don't have enough trades people in NZ to meet the day to day requirements, let alone something the scale of CHCH.

In some ways I feel they should have probably paid out more people and allowed them to arrange their own repairs. Those people likely would have waited a lot longer for the repairs, but almost certainly would have been done to a higher standard. I am actually not sure if that would have been an option, but then there would have been those who felt hard done by, by the settlement figure, and that would have taken time and resources to resolve.

This entire branch deserves it's own thread I think, it's an incredibly complex thing, probably the biggest challenge NZ ever faced.

Fred99

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#2275151 12-Jul-2019 10:47

tdgeek:

Fred99:

I hope there's not a next time. I

They say Chch is good for 10,000 years. Might be unknown faults. But the Alpine Fault is overdue, its also quite regular

It won't be too bad in ChCh. Maybe 8.5 there, 7.5 here, thats Max. We lost our old buildings, so what's left I feel is pretty darn capable. I believe you're in Clifton Hill? Yes, that's another issue clearly. Us flatties will generally be ok

Damage to ChCh from the AF will depend. I believe worst case is if it starts at the Jackson Bay end and ruptures (thus toward the North and Chch) . The shaking is most intense directionally as the fault ruptures toward you, energy release / shaking propagates through the ground at about the same speed (several km per second) as the point from which the energy is being released also moves as the rupture point moves up the fault. If it happens that way, then Chch gets whacked harder than with models of where the epicentre is central- Arthur's Pass - and it rips south, north, or both ways at once.

I think we had a good example of this with the Kaikoura quake. It was complex with several faults letting rip near simultaneously, but they let rip starting in the SW and propagating NW. Epicentre IIRC was only 90km from ChCh, yet from a massive and relatively close quake there was little damage. I had plenty of time to think about what was happening, it felt like our house was on a boat in a heavy swell, yet nothing fell over and no damage. Wellington was much further from the epicentre, but got whacked relatively much harder. At the time I was thinking that it had to be the AF, but then I'd have expected that we'd lose power from an AF major quake before we felt the shaking, and the strong shaking would probably last much longer than 90 seconds.

Anyway, when repairing our house I opted out of an insurer managed repair and DIY. I removed about 50 tonnes of weight (brick cladding, elevated concrete deck etc), braced all the framing with structural ply, retrofitted fixings between all piles and bearers, attached all bearers to perimeter foundation with heavy duty brackets etc, red-clad with lightweight materials, all to modern code, consented and signed off. I think we'll be okay.

Long term post AF quake there will be serious issues for ChCh. There will be massive rockfall/landslide in the mountains, that will damn rivers with risk of damn burst, then all that rock has to go somewhere. It goes down the rivers, that causes aggredation of river beds, the rivers will change course. The Waimak used to exit to the sea at Ellesmere, aggredation from AF events probably the cause of rapid shifts in river course, it'll happen again and be very difficult to mitigate, compounded with sea level rise, it's a huge future problem.

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tdgeek

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#2275156 12-Jul-2019 10:57

Glad you should be ok. I hadnt considered the rivers how they will or may change. That might also potentially affect our lovely clean aquifers? Drain or block or relocate, that would be a major issue in itself. Thats not a broken pipe fix

GV27

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#2282866 24-Jul-2019 15:22

Working Group to look into RMA proposals, due to report back mid-2020. Hard not to see this as a 'draft our election policy for us' assignment but good to see the specific intent is to improve housing affordability.

Three year long stand-offs over legally-settled housing developments do not generally tend to improve housing supply.

tdgeek

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#2282874 24-Jul-2019 15:29

GV27:

Working Group to look into RMA proposals, due to report back mid-2020. Hard not to see this as a 'draft our election policy for us' assignment but good to see the specific intent is to improve housing affordability.

Three year long stand-offs over legally-settled housing developments do not generally tend to improve housing supply.

Its an old problem that no one wanted to deal with or avoided. Up to the Greens and Peters to not get in the way, thats the key issue

GV27

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#2282875 24-Jul-2019 15:35

tdgeek:

Its an old problem that no one wanted to deal with or avoided. Up to the Greens and Peters to not get in the way, thats the key issue

Call me deeply cynical, TD (I'm sure you will 😋) but it also gives the PM a fall-back when criticised for not dealing with affordability, homelessness and the Kiwibuild fiasco ("We're looking to address the underlying causes" or some such, most likely) - as opposed to the total failure to deliver on them to date.

No reason this couldn't have been announced in the first 100 days. Maybe it wasn't that important then.

tdgeek

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#2282994 24-Jul-2019 18:22

GV27:

tdgeek:

Its an old problem that no one wanted to deal with or avoided. Up to the Greens and Peters to not get in the way, thats the key issue

Call me deeply cynical, TD (I'm sure you will 😋) but it also gives the PM a fall-back when criticised for not dealing with affordability, homelessness and the Kiwibuild fiasco ("We're looking to address the underlying causes" or some such, most likely) - as opposed to the total failure to deliver on them to date.

No reason this couldn't have been announced in the first 100 days. Maybe it wasn't that important then.

Not cynical. Yeah fair points. RMA has often been an issue but not the issue. I have no issue with KB and so on, but how can any Govt fix every issue in 18 months? I can't fall back on what about the past? Or can I? National didn't perform, and you can also blame Clarke. Im just not sure how they can be elected then fix everything. My common theme, is was everything rosy in 2017, and once they got elected, housing, homeless, house affordability suddenly happened? No, it was long standing. National played a big part. But it also goes back to Helen Clarke.

From here, is it a 3 year easy fix? No.

Labour got bagged for big policies but no detail. Correct. National in 2008 had NO policies. Not exaggerating. They campaigned on no policies, but time for a change. Labour was the same. Except they had policies with no detail. Hopes and dreams. so its 1-1.

End of the day NZ has issues.

GV27

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#2284506 27-Jul-2019 11:21

Curious to see where Ihumātao goes. Legal avenues have been exhausted, sounds like a majority of the local Iwi are on board and Auckland is drastically short on housing.

Flipside is that there is such an ineffective land supply mechanism in the city that land by the airport next to an industrial park and bordering a geologically and culturally significant area is seen as more viable for development than redeveloping land in the central city close to transport links.

I think of all the takes, the Councillors wringing their hands over 'the police acting as a security force for a private company' with almost zero self-reflection on the part they and the Council have played in us getting to this point is the one I can't stand the most.

Rikkitic

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#2285638 30-Jul-2019 12:14

Just on TVNZ news: 350 million trees planted in 12 hours (!) in Ethiopia. That makes the government's billion-tree programme seem not so exceptional at all. So what is the problem?

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networkn

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#2285641 30-Jul-2019 12:17

Rikkitic:

Just on TVNZ news: 350 million trees planted in 12 hours (!) in Ethiopia. That makes the government's billion-tree programme seem not so exceptional at all. So what is the problem?

Ask them, they are the ones having trouble delivering it.

On a side note, I'd want those numbers out of Ethiopia verified independently. Seems a lot.

I see it was reported by the Ethiopian Government who have such a good track record for honesty :)

But, even if it was 1/10th that number, good on them!

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