At the Vets

I wandered around to the fur child's vet after work to pay for the additional test they ran. I paid for half of this building so I may as well blip it ;-)

The vet is downstairs and upstairs is the 5-star accommodation the fur child has holidays at. I've paid for at least half of that too. I noticed some inmates looking out the windows. I might blip that sight another day.

At the Vets is on the corner of Brougham St and Waltham Rd. They built there 2-3 years ago. It took 9 months to build and 4 months of that was spent building the foundations. Huge deep foundations and the land was rammed twice.

At the time it was a costly pain to prepare land declared at risk from liquifaction in a strong earthqauke. Boy are they glad the land beneath was treated seriously and built on correctly. They were surrounded by liquifaction in February and June's earthquakes but the building stood firm and is safe.

Sadly the truth of my city is that few land developments have taken the known history and risk of our land seriously. A systemic and negligent failure at every level of goverment but I'll leave that topic for another day.

On Wednesday when I was here a crew of guys were in the parking area probing the ground. They drilled down to 7 metres and then there is nothing. Nothing but a lake. Apparently from Hereford St in the central city (still within the red zone cordon) to the Port Hills, that's about the story, nothing beneath but air and a lake. Or at least the bits where liquifaction occurred. I guess you get a bit of that when you build a city on a swamp and then you keep building on more swamp.

If you lay the 1850 Black map (the one drawn up and sent back to England to plan the city of Christchurch) all the areas marked as swamp and raupo, ponds and streams (above and under ground), match where liquifaction has occurred across the city. This corner and the nearby area where my local shops and supermarket were are all marked as swamp and raupo on the Black Map. Incredible isn't it.

Home is a 5 or so minute walk away so the big lake isn't far away. No liquifaction for me so far but I don't take anything for granted anymore.

The fur child is enjoying frequent snacks and larger meals. We had a long rolling quake earlier this evening. Not big but it kept on going. He tensed up and even now his ears are semi alert and he's primed for the smallest noise and creak. He's sticking close to me.

The house is clean, I've baked a frittata, changed the linen and done a load of washing. So much action from the resident dynamo ;-) Tomorrow morning I'll sort my life for the start of the week and all going well I'll have Saturday afternoon flying kites with friends and Sunday tramping in the mountains.

Happy days :-)

I would have uploaded earlier only blip died. Bummer, as I was all set to catch up on comments and journals tonight.