Posts tagged 2011
Aerial Photos of Christchurch
We started flying over Christchurch in October 2011, and we could see straight away that it would be a great way to record the changes in the city, particularly the changes to residential housing. Both the loss of houses in the Residential Red Zone (RRZ) around the river and in the Port Hills, Lyttelton and Kaiapoi and also the new housing areas being built in surrounding areas: Prestons, Kaiapoi, Rangiora, West Melton, Rolleston, Lincoln, Prebleton, Halswell & Wigram Skies.
From the start, the main aim of the photo sequence was to accumulate a long term research repository of photos beginning in September 2010. Ideally the sequence will continue until the rebuild of the city is substantially complete. It was always expected that this would take years which became more like decades as the earthquakes continued, so it would be a long term project.
During the two years of feverish demolition activity to remove most of the dangerous & severely damaged building & make the city safe we spent about four days a month taking photos in the CBD & RRZ. When that phase was substantially completed, we reduced the frequency of the photo shoot to 2 weeks once every six months, as rebuild is much slower than demolition.
Over the years we have undertaken 10 aerial photo shoots. The early shoots were paid for by the National Library as part of the initial commission that Ross held to photograph the impact of the earthquakes. Three of these have been generously sponsored by private donations, including followers of our Facebook page CHCH EQ Photos. We have paid for the majority of the shoots ourselves, out of our commitment to this long term project.
The following photo is a before & after view of the Dallington RRZ where the two photos were taken 3 years apart, one from the first aerial shoot & one from October 2014. This clearly shows the effect of the severe shaking & liquefaction on areas close to the Avon River. Many areas in the lower reaches of the river were similarly affected.
