BEN HEATHER

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The Press

Shock leaves 10 homes uninhabitable

A row of heritage-listed Christchurch houses that survived the September 4 earthquake has taken a battering in the Boxing Day aftershock.

Four two-storey Victorian houses in Chester St East, each partitioned into two homes, have lost their chimneys and suffered damage to the dividing parapets, with one collapsing through the neighbour’s fence in a shower of bricks.

Former Canterbury District Health Board chairman and long-serving city councillor Alister James was at his home in the row on Boxing Day when one of the many smaller aftershocks rattled his parapet free.

“It was quite frightening,” he said. “It made a thunderous sound.”

He said the footpath was busy with pedestrians at the time and it was lucky the bricks fell into a neighbour’s yard and not on to the street.

“It was very fortunate someone wasn’t hurt or killed,” he said.

Heritage advocate Anna Crighton, who also lives in one of the houses, said the four buildings in the row had suffered some damage in the September quake, but Sunday’s rumble had been much worse, particularly with damage to the parapets.

She said engineers’ inspections had revealed the top sections of all four parapets had been held together by nothing but gravity, meaning they would need to be removed and rebuilt, she said.

“It is a bit of blow,” she said. “They are a landmark group that is very important in Christchurch.”

The houses, built in 1892, are heritage-listed, with Crighton’s home classified as a regionally significant heritage building.

The houses remain habitable.

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