VS Newsletters

1 March

Dear International Colleagues;

With the passing of a whole week since our devastating earthquake (technically an aftershock), I am still overwhelmed by the good wishes and offers of assistance that we have been receiving from the international community. I am unfortunately still also overwhelmed by the quantity of messages flowing through and awaiting responses in my inbox, so sorry for the delays responding.

I have compiled a list of those who have expressed an interest in, are on their way to or are already in Christchurch. I have posted it on my web server (at home as my office is still unreachable) to assist those still in the planning stages to see who else is coming and when. This and other hopefully useful operational information for you is available at:
Thank you to those who have compiled excellent descriptions of when they and their teams are arriving and leaving. If you notice something missing or have changed your plans, I would appreciate an emailed update.

There is an increasing body of technical information published on the NZSEE Clearinghouse managed by my colleague Dr Quincy Ma (with a link on the above page) that you may like to peruse to get a better feel for the situation. We encourage you to post your scientific information there, or at least put links to what you are publishing on your home patch of clearing-estate.

We are still discouraging teams from coming too soon because we are still in a (national) state of emergency, the difficulty finding accommodation and because some (they are all essential) lifelines are still being restored. There were rumours earlier today that the Christchurch City Council has banned Overseas Investigations, but I have not received any official confirmation of this. My personal opinion is that it is probably referring to overseas press teams that have not been obeying the official cordons around the central business district.

Many of you will remember the daily meetings operating during our September rehearsal. We have decided to delay those until there is a pressing need to meet. In the meantime, I will try to compile a daily briefing if those in the field are able to send me a brief description of the findings that they would like distributed to the group.

Please pass this message on to interested colleagues or those in your team who I have not identified yet. I have a larger distribution list that includes the New Zealand engineering community, but will not bother them while they are still overworked with building assessments.

Best wishes and safe travel,
Dr Bruce Deam
NZSEE/Canterbury Technical Clearinghouse Coordinator