Bronson Walkabout: The Ring of Fire Strikes

The YMCA hosts the Street Art museum, a former stadium transformed. Jeff points to Seattle in the sticker room.

The Catholic Church is in limbo.

Do you remember the 2011 Christchurch earthquake? I know, neither did I. As a fellow inhabitant of the, ring of fire, I probably should have taken more note of it. Here's a wikipedia link to refresh your memory (if you click on the photo of the church, you will see more images). Sobering.

ReStart: Brining retail back into the central business district

As a tourist, what you see in the central business district are empty buildings, damaged building (like the Catholic Church) and heaps of construction areas. You also notice a certain lack of people and sort of a ghost town feel. Except for the area around the Canterbury Museum, botanical gardens and the fabulous ReStart Mall it's pretty quiet. It's hard to imagine what it was like in the months after the quake and all the work that's been done over the past four years. Many of the city's gothic buildings were permanently damaged, liquefaction caused flooding and major damage, and infrastructure problems. Everyone would have been touched by someone who was either killed or injured during the quake. But what would terrify me was the aftershocks. The wikipedia link above gives a chart of the significant aftershocks that continued for months afterwards. It would take a strong stomach to stick around many people simply left.

Jeff is the speck at the bottom

The Kiwis are a practical bunch and are turning their heads to the future. It's easy to see that in ten years, Christchurch is going to be an amazing city, one it wouldn't have gotten to without the earthquake. It already is an amazing city. Signs of resilience are all around. The city strives to be the Street Art capital of the world (at least some do!) and new artwork appears on building daily it seems. The new buildings that are state of the art. And who knew you could do so many creative things with containers?
I am so glad we came here, it's inspiring to hear the stories and see the resilience. When the next big one hits us in the US, I am sure we will be drawing on what happened here to learn how to recover.