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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