Earthquake Christchurch

[Magoo]

Thanks for that DT.         I didn't check up on it, just spread misinformation. 

[nitpicker1]

http://turbokitty.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/the-truth-about-what-is-happening-in-christchurch-new-zealand/
 was posted 30th   May  2011   *

fletchers took over the much published hostile takeover of the Aussie "Crane building supplies" outfit in March, *  which ties in quite well with the date of turbokitties blogged subject. If yas could sort out the wheat from the chaff there could perhaps be an oat or two visible somewhere

meanwhile
 

 
Fletcher Building unveils $377m debt deal
By Jamie Gray
Updated 11:40 AM Friday Jan 13, 2012

Fletcher Building said it had raised US$300 million ($378m) in long-term debt through a private placement (USPP) with US debt investors.

The placement has two maturities of 10 and 12 years.

Proceeds have been used to repay borrowings drawn under Fletcher Building's principal bank facilities, Fletcher Building said in a statement.

The funds raised have been swapped into Australian dollars in a mix of fixed and floating interest rates. The company has previously accessed the USPP market for longer term funding.

"With the completion of this transaction we have been able to extend the debt maturity profile which suits the long-term nature of our business," Fletcher Building's chief financial officer Bill Roest said.

A handful of New Zealand corporates have successfully raised funds on the United States private placement market over the last year or so.

The USPP market is made up mainly of big insurance companies on the lending side, and utility-style companies on the borrowing side.

The attraction for insurers is that they can pick up interest rates well in excess of what can be achieved from their US treasury equivalents, which remain unusually low while the US government tries to stimulate activity.

Despite America's troubled economy, funds have continued to flow into pension funds and insurance schemes, but the investment alternatives for conservative insurers, who typically have longer-term investment horizons, have been limited because of depressed economic conditions in the US.

Fletcher Building shares last traded at $5.90, down from a high for the year of $9.52 last April. *


- APNZ

By Jamie Gray

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10778480

Just wondering

[dragontamer]

Yeah but... all the best lies have a grain of truth to them.   

[nitpicker1]

Yeah but... all the best lies have a grain of truth to them.   

[ssweetpea]

I am aware I maybe pushing a rant button ....

Shoddy quake repair job 'stressed out' family
MARC GREENHILL Last updated 05:00 17/01/2012
 
A Christchurch woman says she was bullied by contractors repairing her earthquake-damaged home days before Christmas and while her daughter suffered life-threatening pregnancy complications.

Work by Fletcher-appointed contractors began on Lisa Hindson's Linwood home on September 3 after it had suffered quake damage three times since September 2010.

She said the repairs had been fast-tracked because her pregnant daughter, who lived at the house, had a medical condition.

Work was expected to be completed by October 31 but, when family members were ready to return, the contractors were behind schedule by nearly three weeks, she said.

Hindson moved back to the house on December 3 after being told it was near completion, but tradesmen were "in and out" until December 17.

She complained about "substandard" work, which included the house not being level after repiling, varnish stains on the carpet and raw sewage seeping under the house after services were reinstated.

"The [contractors] connected the sewerage, but they forgot to take the polystyrene packing out that they put in to block it while it was in the air. Everything that's gone down my toilet since December 23 has gone under my floor," Hindson said.

The Earthquake Commission (EQC) did not respond to her five complaints and the Fletcher hub at Woolston had not been helpful, she said.

Hindson said she became upset when attempts were made to pressure her into signing off the repairs on December 17 because the subcontractors would not be paid before Christmas if she did not.

"I was to sign it off on the 14th [of December], but I declined. They used bullying and standover tactics to get me to sign. The [Fletcher] project manager said if he's happy with the work that's been done, he can sign it off."

Her daughter's baby was delivered stillborn on December 19 and her daughter spent a week in intensive care because of major blood loss.

"This house was pushed through because we had an impending birth and it was a high-risk pregnancy. I had medical certificates to prove it and they mucked us around and stressed us out," Hindson said.

There had been no contact from Fletcher or the EQC since the contractors left last month, she said.

"Somebody has to be taken to task for this. I've got a lot energy and a lot of knowledge to fight them back, but I feel for the people who haven't and the people who put their trust in someone who wrecked their house," Hindson said.

Fletcher EQR general manager David Peterson said the company was investigating.

 © Fairfax NZ News

 http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/6266783/Shoddy-quake-repair-job-stressed-out-family

[dragontamer]

No point in ranting.  Just stresses you out more.

EQC came and looked at our shockingly piss-poor workmanship and have told us that under no circumstances are we to sign off.  Every last bit needs to be done again together with replacing the pink/orange bricks with red/orange.  And there are more bricks to be replaced than originally because they didn't remove the grout correctly and have chipped along the facing edge of many more.   The EQC guys were furious at the state of everything.  Had it been done correct, the 'new' eq damage could have been fixed at a fraction of the price by patching. 

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Following on from this news story (posted to the immediately-previous page in this thread), now tourists want to actually experience an earthquake in Christchurch, purely for kicks, even to the extent of extending their stay in the city hoping it will happen! 


Visitors want to be moved

By LOIS CAIRNS - Sunday Star-Times | 5:00AM - Sunday, 22 January 2012


CATHEDRAL CITY: Curiosity is drawing a new type of visitor.
 — Photo: Fairfax NZ.

QUAKE-HIT CHRISTCHURCH has become the destination of choice for holiday-makers wanting to experience the earth moving.

Curiosity about earthquakes has led to a small but steady stream of visitors hoping to experience a tremor.

American Steve Atkinson said the recent seismic activity made visiting the city exciting. "Where I come from, you don't get earthquakes, so I'm curious about what it feels like. I'm kinda hoping there is one while I'm here — not a big one, a small one."

And the Sunday Star-Times has been told of an Auckland family who added a few days stay in Christchurch to their South Island holiday just so their children could experience an earthquake.

Motel Association Christchurch branch president Mike Brown said he had heard anecdotal reports of people being attracted to the city by the prospect of experiencing a quake, but the visitors he met were wary of the quakes and shocked by how damaging they could be.

Christchurch and Canterbury Tourism chief executive Tim Hunter said curiosity would inevitably draw some visitors. "If you haven't felt an earthquake before it is an unusual experience and if some people are into that, we'd love to have them."

Christchurch hopes eventually to have a purpose-built museum and entertainment facility where visitors could learn about earthquakes and how they transformed the city. Part of the planned rebuild, the proposed EPI-Centre — costing between $42 million and $75m — would feature interactive displays and a simulator.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/latest-edition/6295182/Visitors-want-to-be-moved

[nitpicker1]

Just for the record

see also

http://www.gns.cri.nz/Home/News-and-Events/Media-Releases/Fault-structures-revealed

[Magoo]

No end in sight yet I think.

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Rental shortage: ‘State must step in’

By OLIVIA CARVILLE - The Press | 5:00AM - Friday, 13 April 2012


DESPERATE PLEA: Debbie Morris says Christchurch's rental
accommodation shortage is so serious she and her two
daughters may have to resort to sleeping in the family
car because they are running out of places to stay.
 — DAVID HALLETT/Fairfax NZ.

THE GOVERNMENT must intervene in Christchurch's rental housing crisis, a leading economist says.

Robin Clements, a senior economist with research and investment house UBS, said the Government needed to assess the crisis rather than leave it in the hands of the market.

Pressure is growing on the Government to do something after Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee said last month that the solution to the city's critical rental shortage was best left to the market.

Clements disagreed with Brownlee, who declined to comment on the issue yesterday.

"Markets only function within the parameters of which they are given and Christchurch's market is working and it is doing what markets do, but that is not providing an outcome that is socially acceptable," Clements said.

"So, unless they want to sit on the sidelines and watch the crisis deepen, action is required."

Unaffordable housing, land-supply restrictions and long-haul consent processes were underlying the crisis, he said.

Over time, he believed property owners would meet the fresh demand of housing in Christchurch, but with winter pending "we don't have that sort of time".

The city's health system was already on the edge and urgent housing was needed to protect vulnerable families before winter, he said.

In a letter to Brownlee last week, New Zealand First said leaving the rental crisis to the market was a "recipe of chaos".

"There is now a very serious housing shortage in Christchurch and the rental market is out of control. Too little is being done too late. The time for the Government to act is now," the letter from MP Denis O'Rourke said.

The party called for regulation of rents "immediately".

Tenants Protection Association manager Helen Gatonyi "couldn't agree more".

She said that if the Government did not intervene it would have to take responsibility for the consequences of its inaction.

"How bad do they actually want it to get before they have the courage to do what everyone is saying and respond to this crisis?" she said.

"The Government is responsible for the wellbeing of its people and housing is fundamental to a person's wellbeing. It underpins absolutely every other aspect of their life, and if the market isn't able to provide that housing or accommodate that need, then isn't it the Government's responsibility to do so?"

As the crisis deepened, more people would become homeless, which Gatonyi said would be far more costly than immediate intervention.

SOLO MOTHER: ALL I WANT IS A ROOF OVER OUR HEADS

A Christchurch woman has been couch-surfing with her two children for weeks and fears they will have to sleep in their car tonight as the city's rental housing shortage hits breaking point.

The single mother has been turned away from stretched welfare agencies, temporary housing villages and caravan parks.

For the past two nights, Debbie Morris and her daughters, Chelsea, 11, and Sarah, 8, have slept on the couch of her friend's red-zoned Burwood home.

She had "no idea" where they would sleep tonight.

Early last month, they were forced into homelessness after their landlord increased the rent at their Addington home by $65 a week.

Their belongings have been stored in a shed while they couch-surf the city in search of accommodation.

Morris said yesterday that she was afraid she had "run out of friends' couches".

"I have hit breaking point and I am literally taking it day by day," she said.

"I don't know what I am going to do. We will all go into the car if we have to.

"I never would have foreseen this. All I want is a roof over our heads. I want to come home and cook my children a meal. I don't want to drag them from house to house, from couch to couch."

Morris works part-time at Tower Junction and her children are enrolled at Burnside schools.

She moved from Australia to Christchurch with her two youngest daughters in early 2010 for a better life. In just over two years, she has lived in 13 properties across the city but said she had never been able to settle for "one reason or another".

One woman she boarded with became terminally ill, another got fed up with tenants and then the rental crisis hit the city shortly after the earthquakes, she said.

She was denied a spot in a caravan park because she was not a red-zone resident. Work and Income and Housing New Zealand had told her "they couldn't help us right now".

Since the family started squatting, Morris said, she had suffered stress-related health problems and taken time off work. Her children had missed school and her youngest daughter had needed counselling.

"You feel so inadequate as a parent when you are left in this situation. I feel like I have let them down, like I am not good enough as a mother."

She pleaded to anyone in a position to help: "I want my children to feel safe. I'm a good person. I have good references. Please help us."

http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/christchurch-earthquake-2011/6734583/Rental-shortage-State-must-step-in


See: “Herr Brownlie says....” (click on the cartoon)

[Lovelee]

A magnitude-3.3 earthquake that struck Christchurch this afternoon could be the 11,000th tremor since September 4, 2010.

The quake hit at 12.55pm, 15 kilometres east of Christchurch at a depth of 6km.

Over 163 people reported feeling the "moderate" shake on the GeoNet website.

Press reporter Charlie Gates tweeted: "Ooh. Bit of a rumble. First for a while."

Twitter user Kev Mair said: "Wibble wobble in Chch CBD."

According to Christchurch Quake Map, the quake was the 11,000th the region has experienced since the magnitude-7.1 struck early on September 4 2010.

GNS Science geological hazard modeller Matt Gerstenberger said 11,000 quakes was a significant but expected number for the region to have experienced.

"Anyone living there knows what it has been like. However, it is in the range of what we would have expected for a region which has had a large earthquake. "

Many of those quakes would not have been felt, he said.

"Many would have been so small they wouldn't have been noticed. Also, I'm not sure what the minimum magnitude for a quake is that is mapped on that website, but that [11,000] figure would be in the range, I suspect".

He did not expect the number of quakes mapped to go up greatly.

"According to the aftershock sequence, the aftershocks will now be further apart and so the number will go up slowly over time,'' he said.

"There won't be a huge or sudden increase."

http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/christchurch-earthquake-2011/8190585/11-000-quakes-since-Sept-2010