On a
recent episode of Campbell Live a woman from Christchurch memorably said that
though the Christchurch earthquakes were a disaster, the rebuild has become a
travesty. Yes. Below is a letter we received last week from the Earthquake
Commission (EQC – for my non-New Zealand readers, this is the state entity
through which all earthquake claims must be dealt in the first instance):
Thank you for your email. I have made a note
of the points in your email on your claim so this information will be taken
into account when your quote is reviewed. I have also labelled your quote as
urgent in the hope that this will speed things up for you. Unfortunately there is not much more that we can do in the meantime as
there are currently a large number of quotes in the queue for review and many
are in similar states of urgency. I apologise sincerely for the delay and
assure you that we are working as quickly as possible.
Kind regards,
[Name]
[Name]| Claims Administrator | Opt Out Team | Earthquake
Commission
Over three and a half years ago.
I’ll repeat that.
Over three and a half years ago our house in Diamond
Harbour would have been a reasonably cheap fix out of the Christchurch earthquakes,
and certainly under the EQC cap of $100,000. These many years later we now have
pools of dirty water on the bottom floor which has become unliveable, carpets
and timber framing sodden, and I suspect we may be well over cap to fix anymore
- (which, perversely, would be great, as we could finally then make it out of this
incompetent, Kafkaesque bottleneck created by government through EQC and be
able to deal with our private insurer regarding our specific damage and hence
requirements, toward getting something done other than pointless scoping
reports. As you can see from the letter writer’s sign off, we are currently in
the process of trying to ‘opt out’ of the Fletcher rebuild, but this is proving
as impossible as getting Fletcher’s to actually rebuild any damned thing.)
There is no better example than this letter of the
reason why the Central Business District which has been taken over by
government CERA in Christchurch remains an un-rebuilt, lifeless hole, which may
never recover to attract business back, while suburban Christchurch has taken
off with a life, verve and vigour created from the spontaneous order of
individuals and businesspeople going about getting their lives and businesses
back relatively unfettered by local and central government busy-bodies. After
over three and a half years EQC have not even solved the bureaucratic
bottleneck around ‘urgent quotations’ in a queue, let alone the more routine
ones. Plus any possibility of action after all this time is still down to 'hope'.
This is bullshit. I never paid insurance so I could
be better off via a claim, only so I would be left in the same place/situation
on the insured event happening as I was beforehand. What a distance between
that and this ‘there is not much more we
can do in the meantime’ because we have this long queue, almost four years
after an event. I would never take such nonsense from a private firm, indeed,
no private firm could stay in business with lack of service to this extent, however,
with government we have no choice.
And that’s why I don’t want government running my
life, or the city I live; which further explains my frustration from the
knowledge there is still a very good chance a Left-centric government that
believes in just the incompetency seen here will be voted in the general
election coming September. Because regardless of the evidence, too many of us
have become brainwashed into thinking the state knows best, it’ll look after
us, and can miraculously provide solutions better than we ourselves can. And that
bullshit is caused by the death of a former classical liberal ethic in New
Zealand under the draconian enforcement of Western tax surveillance states, and
the dependency which has been created for so many to the big brother busy body
governance those states now represent.
Mark
ReplyDeleteWelcome to a city with tens of thousands of stories like that one. I have an uninsured rental house because my insurer Ansvar left town after the quake, and I'm still waiting for repairs over three years later so that we can get insurance from another provider.
It's worse than that however, the original EQC assessment carried out by an Australian policeman and a retired baker decided that ours was 'the best they had seen' and we subsequently had a full and final settlement offer from EQC for $1,400.
As internal doors were swinging open by themselves, aluminumim windows jammed, foundations and brickwork cracked, I commissioned and paid for an independent builder and also an engineers report. - According to them, the house is 'racked' or twisted on its foundations.
I made a formal complaint to EQC and provided them with the independent reports - they sent out seven (yes seven) staff who poured over the property for a full afternoon, only to have their head man look me in the eye and say 'we believe it is all historical damage'.
Nice.
I eventually encouraged EQC to send out yet another team, this time they agreed that the damage was much more extensive and not historical damage. They went away, and I have heard nothing since despite numerous phone calls.
We are in the queue, and without insurance.
Now I'm a persistant soul so I know it will come good for us in the end, however you can be sure this will not be the case for everyone.
The quality of repairs that have been completed is yet another story waiting to be told.
Hopeless isn't it. The leaking we've got, and getting worse, is from where the tanking system has seemingly failed (house built into a hill). Despite no leak until after the quakes, though not until about nine or so months after the February 2011 quake, EQC already mooting the issue of being historical so I expect we've got a bun fight as you have.
DeleteYou're still covered by EQC as you were insured? Hopefully the fix will be under the cap for you.
Good luck!