March 1, 2011 8:29am by David Farrar

2011 Christchurch Earthquake Day VIII

0849: There will be some sort of inquiry into the earthquake – not into why it happened of course, but into why buildings that had been deemed safe collapsed, and also generally into lessons we can learn from the disaster.

0847: Just seen quote from Key that ” the earthquakes were five to eight times more significant to the New Zealand economy than Hurricane Katrina was to the United States”. NZIER said they now expect GDP growth in 2011 to be 0.3% only.

Death toll now 154.

The volunteer efforts are inspiring – the Student Volunteer Army, the Rangiora Earthquake Express and eq.org.nz – to name just three. They all started in much the same way – one person has an idea about how to make a difference, and others get in behind to make it a reality.

The SVA gave an update for Monday, which summarised is:

A battalion of more the 1100 volunteers in 21 buses continued working to clear silt. Today the focus was on Dallington, though two buses diverted to Aranui to tackle specific projects.
315 Squadrons have registered with SVA so far. These are groups of three to five people, with their own transport and equipment, who we assign to jobs coming in from across the city. We have over 2000 jobs registered so far and are working through these at a rate of 180 to 230 per day
The third operation, Street Team, an innovation inspired by Te Puni Kokiri, aiming to provide face to face information in those parts of the eastern suburbs still without power, where other forms of communication are not working – over the past two days we have delivered 80,000 fliers in areas that are difficult to reach because of the damage that has been done
In the past 36 hours, 1200 people have registered to help online on the SVA website, www.sva.org.nz, including approximately 500 with specialist skills. SVA is collaborating with Civil Defence, which is able to log in to this database. More than 23 000 people have now joined our online network.

And again don’t forget the two minutes silence at 12.51 pm today.