An earthquake repair story from the south

OPINION

Earthquake repair work is under way on our 1911 villa in St Albans, courtesy of EQC.

Thousands of Christchurch homeowners are going through this.

On my daily walks around the neighbourhood Im constantly surprised at the disappearance of homes that have made up my urban landscape for the past 26 or so years here.

And the speed of building replacement houses is amazing. Some sections have had poles the size of lampposts hammered into the ground about one metre apart, topped with various concrete foundation systems. On other sections the soil has been removed and replaced with harder fill, compressed and then re-covered.

Modular construction means framing and roofing can be installed within a week or two.

Regardless of the propaganda from EQC about its progress, there are still plenty of big jobs in the queue to keep contractors busy for many months yet. Ours is costing close to $100,000.

Repairing older homes is less straightforward, like the arrangements for project managing them.

Its essential to develop a relationship with the contractor.

The EQC/EQR (Fletcher) repair programme is a three-way bureaucratic tussle.

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An earthquake repair story from the south