New Zealand: ibis Christchurch Reopens as a Powerful Symbol
September 27, 2012The ibis Christchurch in New Zealand recently reopened and is the first downtown hotel housing guests so far. It stands as a symbol of the city centre’s gradual rebirth from the string of earthquakes that wrecked the hotel and city in 2010 and 2011.
The magnitude-6.3 earthquake that hit Christchurch, New Zealand’s second-largest city, on 22 February 2011, killed 185 people and left colossal damage in its wake. The city centre was reduced to a cluster of collapsing buildings and rubble, mud and water oozing from broken pipes, and leaking sewerage.
As many as 15,000 quakes rock this shattered city every year. A particularly fierce one had indeed hit it in 2010. A hotel reopening in the city centre two years later is a powerful symbol there.
