New Zealand

OK, I'll move it to The Lounge.

The main north south highway is now open from 7am till 8.30pm.  We drove it just after Christmas, and by heck they have done some work.  This was a week after it reopened, and still in the Christmas holiday period, and the Kaikoura locals were saying it was the busiest the town had ever been, period.

The highway tunnels are all gone, and parts have been rebuilt on causeways and bridges 100 metres off the original coast line, to get them away from unstable rock faces.  Some of it is still temporary and very close to the sea with huge concrete blocks protecting it.  Amazingly, the road was closed again after a storm washed those blocks into the road.

SH1 closed reopens near Kaikōura after sea blocks washed onto road | Stuff.co.nz

We could see diggers that had carved a path 100s of feet up slopes of loose spoil.  Some of this was done with remote controlled diggers, but most of it was highly skilled, and very brave operators. Sorry, not a great picture, but you'll see what I mean

Fortunately, this happened overnight when no one was in the digger.  Where it was safe to do so, work carried on 24/7 under floodlights, but that would not have been practical at the top of the slip.

The most sought after job was the abseilers.  It was great pay, and reasonable safe so long as they were not hit by rockfall from above.  And what a view!

They used helicopters to wash the loosest rocks off with monsoon buckets.

What they could not get moving with pry bars, was persuaded down the hill with explosives. :-)

The initial reopening

State Highway 1 north of Kaikōura opens after 13-month rebuild | Stuff.co.nz

Up to 1700 people have been working on the road and rail repairs, and it is a 90 minute drive from Blenheim, so they built a wee temporary housing for them.  This only takes 300 people, but a lot are staying Kaikoura. They had to build causeways around the slips for workers and construction machinery to get to the closed off slips.  This was built with spill from the slips, so a touch of serendipity there.

I am not sure about some of the inland communities like Clarence.  It looks like they have a temporary bridge at the moment.  It was quite a while before they even contacted after the quake a year ago, and they were completely cut off.  Imagine finding that the bridge connecting you to the rest of the world and the nearest shops, was completely gone?

To put this in perspective, it is seven years since the Christchurch quake, and they are still rebuilding.  A _lot_ of people have yet to agree terms with insurance companies, and a _lot_ ot people have no sewage and are relying on portaloos.   That's not a good look.  It's a bad time to be getting into the housing market, as insurance companies don't want to take on new customers in high risk zones.  You can't get a mortgage without house cover, so goodness knows what is happening with that.

A bit of a mish mash of a report because I kept jumping about as I thought of stuff.  They worked their socks off to get the road reopened in just a year.  Meanwhile it was one heck of a detour to get to Christchurch.  Ignore the Molesworth road in the image below.  It is a 4x4 track only open from January to April, and while I have seen family saloons use it, you couldn't drive a truck through.  One of the bridges was out anyway, which meant a river crossing — we heard that some people were directed along the Molesworth when SH1 was closed again after the storm.  People were running out of petrol, and getting stuck.  Crazy!

Motorists run out of gas trying to get around SH1 closure via Molesworth Station, rescued by DOC | Stuff.co.nz

That'll do you.  I'll post this before my computer crashes and makes me cry — although this should recover if that happened.