Why it’s so important to mark the anniversaries of earthquakes

By Ursula Cochran

First, we remember the dead. The two Kaikōura earthquake victims weren’t killed by the earthquake so much as by failure of the buildings they were in. But a year on from the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that shook central New Zealand, is also a time to be thankful. Thankful that most of us who experienced the earthquake survived it, thankful that the earthquake didn’t happen under a city this time, thankful that it happened at night so no-one was buried under the numerous landslides on State Highway 1, thankful that the tsunami impact was lessened by low tide and a freshly uplifted coastline.

The first anniversary of the Kaikōura earthquake of November 14 2016 is obviously a time for assessing recovery. There is solid progress – everyone has food, water, power; the whales are back; the railway is open for limited services. But many do not have safe homes or even offices. State Highway 1 north of Kaikōura is closed and other parts of the highway network are fragile. Wellington’s port is only partially functional. Buildings are still being demolished. There are very many deeply tired and stressed people – on the land, in schools, businesses, government departments – all attempting to cope with upheaval and establish a sustainable “new normal” in the post-earthquake environment.

This was a massive event for a small country to deal with. As we know from the Christchurch experience, recovery is a long process. So, we are now in a double-whammy of earthquake recovery, for, although we’ve marked the sixth anniversary of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, we have not fully recovered from that devastating event.

The surest way we can speed up recovery after future events is to build resilience – the ability to readily recover from shock. The word “resilient”, originally applied to people, is now applied to everything from pipelines that don’t break, or can be repaired quickly, to communities who support each other through a crisis. A little action on resilience planning and spending now results in less money spent in disaster recovery and, more importantly, happier humans. This is an important benefit of marking earthquake anniversaries – remembering how people were impacted and keeping resilience on national and personal agendas.

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