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Bay Harbour: September 09, 2020

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PAGE 10 Wednesday <strong>September</strong> 9 <strong>2020</strong><br />

BAY HARBOUR<br />

Latest Canterbury news at starnews.co.nz<br />

Sept 4, 2010 – A Decade On<br />

Defiant locals gathered after quake<br />

• By Chris Barclay<br />

THE VALLEY Inn regulars<br />

reacted to the <strong>September</strong> 4,<br />

2010, earthquake with a show of<br />

defiance that left an insurance<br />

assessor dismayed, and publican<br />

Dean Calvert unfazed.<br />

Hours after Tour of Duty<br />

played in the long-standing<br />

Heathcote bar, the locals<br />

soldiered on, with one final<br />

session in the severely damaged<br />

triangular-shaped watering hole.<br />

Calvert was on the scene<br />

shortly after the quake struck at<br />

4.35am and by daybreak locals<br />

had already assembled amid the<br />

wreckage.<br />

“We were sitting around the<br />

well having a beer, the whole<br />

time locals were coming and<br />

going, it was strange times,”<br />

Calvert remembered.<br />

“The insurance guy came<br />

down and goes: ‘What are you<br />

doing? You need these people out<br />

of here’.<br />

“I told him they’re having<br />

their last beer in the pub. This is<br />

part of their lounge for all these<br />

people. We’re not going to be<br />

reopening are we?”<br />

But Calvert, who took over the<br />

lease the day his parents George<br />

and Janet bought the building in<br />

2004, pessimism was eventually<br />

misplaced.<br />

The family never wavered<br />

RESILIENT: Owner Dean Calvert in front of the rebuilt Valley<br />

Inn. Right: The damage caused by the <strong>September</strong> 4, 2010,<br />

earthquake.<br />

PHOTO: GEOFF SLOAN ​<br />

about building a new Valley<br />

Inn, and had the February 22,<br />

2011, earthquake not intervened<br />

Calvert says they could have<br />

reopened a year to the day the<br />

original “fell over”.<br />

“We would have been on top<br />

of it but we had to recheck the<br />

ground (after February).<br />

“We didn’t start building until<br />

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May but the local tradies all offered<br />

to work. It was all hands on<br />

deck just to get the pub back.”<br />

Then mayor of Christchurch<br />

Bob Parker reopened the bar<br />

23 days after the quake’s first<br />

anniversary, with the brick-lined<br />

well the only remnants from the<br />

original built in 1877.<br />

While the Valley Inn was<br />

quickly re-established, Calvert<br />

laments the same cannot be said<br />

for the central city.<br />

“I don’t know how it’s taken<br />

so long. You look at Japan when<br />

they had that tsunami and earthquake,”<br />

he said.<br />

“They were probably rebuilt in<br />

two or three years at the most.<br />

And we’re still arguing with<br />

bloody politics and bits and<br />

pieces.<br />

“Everyone’s p****d around too<br />

much organising stuff which<br />

they can’t organise.<br />

“We were lucky. The earthquake<br />

happened on the 4th of<br />

<strong>September</strong> and the bulldozer<br />

went through on the 10th.<br />

“We were lucky we got on to it<br />

so quickly. Looking at some of<br />

the sites around town it’s a bit of<br />

shame that people haven’t organised<br />

things a bit better.”<br />

Calvert received the permit to<br />

rebuild the day before the February<br />

22, 2011, earthquake and<br />

never had any second thoughts<br />

in the following days.<br />

“It was like a meeting place for<br />

the locals, it needed to be rebuilt.<br />

The local church did a BYO pub<br />

on Fridays for a while. They<br />

knew the Valley was a meeting<br />

place for Heathcote.<br />

“Everyone used to go there and<br />

talk to their mates, some had<br />

been there 50 years.”<br />

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