Reflections on Christchurch 2011
Moving around the Christchurch CBD following the February earthquake was a sobering experience. Having spent some of my childhood living in Kilmore Street and being no stranger to the shaking's and rumbles that occur from time to time around New Zealand, it was hard to believe the level of destruction left in the wake of this devastating quake. Working in the emergency services and emergency preparedness business for the time that I had, it was evident that this would be a long and painful recovery process for many. Even those who considered themselves well prepared would find this a challenge of enormous proportions.
As we talk with people during our training and discuss what preparedness steps people have taken, we frequently observe how totally unprepared and unconcerned some people are about such events. We see it as our role to encourage people to put things in place to make the impact of emergencies less severe and to consider that the quality of life after an event may well be determined by what was put in place prior to an event!
Now seeing before my eyes a city so severely damaged and watching over the following weeks I could see that many businesses would fail to recover and even the larger businesses would be left with lasting memories of the impact of these few minutes of reckoning.
As I write this in early May, I hear the news that the business owners of Cashel Mall are only now being allowed back to see their buildings for the first time! 73 days is a long time to be locked out of your building and this is only the beginning. It takes a lot of resolve and more than a little luck to be able to rebuild a business in these conditions.
So what have we learnt from the experience? Like many others, we revisited our own level of preparedness and decided there were still a number of steps that we could take as business owners and individuals. We needed to improve our resilience by adding to our water, power, and general supplies so we invested in a water tank, an additional cooker and an electrical generator. We also recognised the risk of having our old chimney still hovering above our lounge and began the process of removal. We also met with neighbours and discussed how we might mutually assist each other and discovered in the process what each of us had learnt from the experience. With increased preparedness at home it was time to consider the business. It was clear that access to business information and tools would be important so we are currently investigating the benefits of moving more of our business information into cloud based solutions and revisiting our insurances to ensure they would provide the right cover in a similar event.
Events like these are bigger than the individual. If we have more than we need ourselves then we can help others and no matter how well we might prepare, there is always the possibility that we are the unfortunate ones who lose the lot, so preparedness is about resilience across a community and we owe it to others to do our part if we expect them to help us in our hour of need.
Paul Blum, Director, Devereux-Blum Training.
If you think your business could benefit from the services we offer check out the following:
Emergency Preparedness Auditing
Earthquake / Tsunami Awareness training