Durham St North is now blocked off in town again as they take down a bunch of buildings (it is closed off till late May at least... the police HQ is one of them) and of course the center of the city is till completely closed off. We drove along St Asaph Steet today and I hopped out and took a few photos down Manchester St so you can see how the demolition is progressing. It sure is going to take a long time until life is normal again. Speaking of which, we were hoping for news on residential house foundations in Feb 2012 but now that has been pushed back a few months. It really will be 2-3 years until they get around to rebuilding our house. Not that I am complaining, our toilet is still flushing.
I got the fright of my life this weekend though... Megane and I popped down to Merivale Mall to get a couple of things, and it was SHUT! AAAAGH!!!! At 9am some guys in Hi Viz vests ("they are fluro, not bulletproof" he he he, I love that road sigh) walked thru the mall and gave out Indefinate Closure notices to shop owners, and then evacuated everyone.
Of course they didn't advertise this from the street. Oh no, you had to park and go up to the building and then be turned away by a grouchy lady who said "you want to know why? well there is a sight RIGHT THERE!" To which I said, "yes, but it just says it is shut, I want to know WHY because it doesn't really inspire confidence that it has taken *this long* to work out that the building is not safe, especially since we haven't had anything over 4.3 for weeks". She got really huffy and said "well, this is Christchurch you know!" And it turns out that Tower Insurance owns the buildings so I guess we are never going to see it reopen. Sigh. I had no idea how much I relied on Fresh Choice supermarket to be open 7am-9pm. If anything happens to Northlands I'm outta here.
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