From Natural Disaster to Governance Disaster

Christchurch has a problem much greater than earthquakes right now. The problem is a giant impedance mismatch between the self appointed people in charge of ‘recovery’, and those that live and have made this city what it was. It’s been this way for a while. The earthquakes won’t be the thing which destroy this city, it will be the combined responses of Civil Defence, CERA, and the Council that will. Right now they are unequivocally failing this test.

First, apologies for the length, and roughness. So much to say, so much frustration, i’ve found it hard to edit this into something more concise and punchy than what follows. The issues:

Problem 1 - Communication

At the point things transitioned from rescue to recovery two weeks after the February 22nd earthquake, there needed to be a decisive change in communication. That has still not happened. This is one of the fundamental problems right now. We have an authority in control who are operating with the pace, efficiency, and effectiveness of a government department. It simply doesn’t work.

We have an organisation who communicates through press releases.

We have an organisation who, when they do release information, release useless propaganda, extolling numbers and statistics, when what people really need here are specific details. It doesn’t help anyone to know that 100 buildings are scheduled for urgent demolition. What I need to know is if one of those buildings is the building that my office is in, along with all my equipment that has been sitting there since February 22nd, so that I can either recover contents during demolition, or make sure any data residing in there is destroyed to my satisfaction. I need to know so that I can progress the insurance claim which i’ve had sitting in limbo for four months because loss adjusters are denied access into the area. I use to hope that the building our office was in could be made safe, ride this out and be repaired fit for occupation again. Frankly all I hope now is that the next aftershock finishes it off completely, ending this limbo situation as soon as possible.

We have an organisation who have so far in the past four months failed to articulate any plan whatsoever for tackling the entire city centre Red Zone.

I would have expected that we’d know exactly what the plan is to make safe and shrink the Red Zone as fast as possible. Something along the lines of they’ve assigned two CERA / Council / CD representatives to each of the forty something city blocks in the Red Zone. That these representatives had introduced themselves to the building owners in their block as their first port of call for anything, and that their sole mission in life was to work with the building owners in their assigned block to make safe or arrange demolition of their buildings. Facilitating and prioritising access to demolition and building resources, working with insurers, removing road blocks and delays for owners via their legislative powers. I’d have expected something along the lines of they’ve started working from the edge of the Red Zone inwards with this approach. That their priority for the city centre was to make safe and shrink the Red Zone cordon systematically from the outside in as they cleared each block, and do this as quickly as humanly possible.

Instead, we’ve heard exactly nothing about how they’re approaching this situation. I’ve got no clue if they intend to keep the Red Zone cordon at its current position for the next month, the next year, or the next decade. One can only assume in the absence of this information being public, that there is no coordinated, systematic approach to sorting out the Red Zone. That they’re just meandering along piecemeal looking at buildings thinking, we should get to work on that one today. There certainly doesn’t seem to be any urgency. With the number of demolitions confirmed, i’d expect to see a constant stream of rubble trucks leaving the Red Zone. It’s barely a trickle from what I’ve witnessed.

Scheduled works should be public information. Online and visible for anyone to see. I want to know how many demolition crews are working, what buildings they’re working on, how many truckloads of debris have been removed from the Red Zone on a specific day. I want to know exactly what buildings are holding up progress, whether it’s the owner, insurer, or demolition/repair resources blocking progress. I want the inner workings of this organisation in full public view at all times.

The extreme opaqueness that currently exists around CERA operations is suspicious. It infers either incompetence, or malice. Neither are acceptable.

We’re living under a ‘trust us, we know what’s best’ policy. I don’t know these people. I don’t trust these people. They haven’t earned my trust.

Here’s how to fix the abysmal communication:

1. Communicate details. For example, don’t tell us ‘100 buildings are scheduled for urgent demolition’ instead, give us a list of those 100 buildings. Don’t tell us it’s a complicated issue. Explain the details of what complicates the issue. Explain the why in detail, impart understanding to people when you don’t have definitive answers. The verbose political equivalent of ‘trust us’, or ‘it’s complicated, you wouldn’t understand’ is not a satisfactory answer. It grates people. It erodes any shred of goodwill.

2. Don’t withold information. You’re not dealing with children, it’s not your job to censor factual information of ANY sort. Don’t ‘stage’ information releases into politically expedient timeframes. No information is too small or too sensitive to release. Release early and release often.

3. Put media on notice. There are many moving targets. That’s not an excuse for choosing to say nothing over releasing the best information at hand at the time. Put media on notice such that reporting isn’t sensationalist or irrational, it’s your job to articulate information in a way which makes clear the terms under which the information is being given, whether it is a highly variable situation, or that it’s a best estimate but subject to change, or a definitive not subject to change.

Problem 2 - Ease friction, don’t create it!

Neither CERA nor the City Council are ultimately capable of rebuilding this city. Only the land owners, business owners, and residents have the power and resources to do that.

The sole purpose of CERA’s existence should be to ease friction for property owners in getting the city up and running again.

The harder CERA or the City Council make it for land and building owners to access, repair, and remain in control of their property, the easier it is for these people to refuse to reinvest insurance payouts back into the city. To date, their approach has only succeeded in rapidly depleting goodwill. People are ready to blow. We have a situation where the entire city centre has been cordoned off for four months now, locking out building and business owners entirely. They make it extremely difficult for stake holders to access their property, do emergency repairs, organise engineering assessments, organise insurance assessments, and play their part in getting their situation sorted quickly, thus getting the city in its entirety sorted and back on its feet quickly.

Right now they are creating friction in the recovery process, annoying those who they want to be reinvesting their insurance payouts in the city. Their job is to ease friction, not throw up literal road blocks. Their role should be a facilitator to those who are really responsible for the recovery of this city. Right now they’re a significant inhibitor, disempowering those who have skin in the game from getting things moving.

CERA need to do the following with respect to building and business owners immediately:

1. Allow registered, unescorted access for building owners, and limited individuals they need into the red zone during daylight hours at their own risk.

2. Allow business owners and limited associated individuals registered, unescorted, access upon request, coordinated with business in similar locations into the red zone for the purpose of recovering items, or obtaining insurance assessments at their own risk.

The only two conditions of access should be that a legal waiver of liability be signed by each person entering the Red Zone, and that they don’t stray beyond a specified path to their property when in the Red Zone.

When I approached the mayor, Bob Parker about this access problem, his response was predictable. It was essentially this (not verbatim): The Red Zone is a dangerous place. We can’t let people in because imagine the media uproar which would occur if something happened and you were killed, or had to have limbs amputated after we allowed you in there. They’d be calling for heads to roll. I also don’t want to put rescuers lives at unnecessary risk to pull you out of a building if we let you in.

There’s a few interesting parts to that. First, political and personal fallout featured prominent in his response. Not a desirable trait in a leader in a time like this. The future of this city is infinitely more important that a single person’s career. The city and its people must come first.

Second is the fact that the concerns can be easily mitigated. First make the terms of access abundantly clear through very public, clear communication, spell out exactly what will happen in the unlikely event things go wrong, and someone is killed or injured in there after entering at their own risk. Second, make it clear to those entering that it is entirely at their own risk. In the event that anything happens while in there, you’re on your own, don’t expect rescue teams to be put at risk to help you.

Ultimately it’s not the job of the authorities to attempt to assume liability, or rationalise risk on behalf of people who are making informed choices around their own actions. It’s unreasonable for them to attempt to do this. By engaging in this sort of lunacy, they are stalling progress on getting the Red Zone sorted, directly ensuring it stays a more dangerous place for a longer period of time. Costing the city massive amounts of money, and putting significant undue pressure on businesses and residents.

Problem 3 - No Leadership

This essentially encompasses the first two major problems. There is no inspirational leadership in this ‘recovery’. The whole situation reeks of political paralysis. No one has stood up to put the people of this city first and do the right thing. There is arse covering. There is extreme and irrational risk aversion. There is consideration of selfish political ramifications of every decision made. It’s sickening. It’s frustrating. It’s draining. It’s killing this city.

This problem is huge. The effect of these events on New Zealand is estimate at the equivalent of two 2011 Sendai earthquakes, or more than eight Hurricane Katrinas. The utter lack of urgency and progress here, beyond essential services, is mind boggling, and inexcusable.

Who’s gonna stand up, take control and do the right thing by the people of this city before this situation drags the whole country down?

Layton