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Fear and trembling in New Zealand

 

Saturday's earthquake in New Zealand was as big as the Haiti one -- but with the blessings that NZ has long had building codes that take quake risk into account, and it happened at a time when people were at home in (quake-resistant) wooden houses.

It was the large old stone and brick public buildings that fared worst, and it will be tragic for Christchurch if it loses some of them as they are its defining glories (along with Hagley Park).

On the news I saw a restaurant in a building that lost its walls but still had its tables laid with everything in place. This in a quake that lifted whole chunks of road and split floors.

The whole disaster is a shock to me. I used to live in Chch, and its orderliness is always remarked upon -- nothing ever out of place, everything neatly arranged; all rather British, in fact.

Or it was!

Click pic for story

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See the angle of that street?
That’s one of the reasons people either love or hate my old home town, Wellington New Zealand. The other factor that separates the lovers from the blow-ins is the wind, which can dominate the city like a wounded beast.

This guy, Ralph Lester Blair, photographs the streets of Wellington with an eye to simply documenting what’s there — there is no hint with him of special FX or selling to the tourist or some other niche group.
He gives you Wellington, as scruffy and deshabille as it is, and whenever I look up his page to see what he’s been up to I think … “aah yes, home”.

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