The Christchurch earthquakes caused a lot of problems for the people who lived through them.
Our house and granny flat had no straight walls anymore, large gaps between the ceilings and the walls with dust drifting down from the roof space, the floors were like mini roller coasters and no longer level, doors jammed and would not close or open easily in the frames, hot water tank leaking, refrigerator failed from the shaking, brick chimney fell onto roof and rolled down roof and onto ground causing extensive damage, roof tiles broken by joists and rafters in the framing snapping and punching through the roof, sewage pipes broken and leaking, water main damaged and leaking, double brick walls all round the house damaged and split apart, some with big gaps, some you could sway the walls if you pushed them.
Mum went to live in an old peoples home and I stayed on in the damaged house with no hot water for more than four years before we got a settlement from the Insurance company.
The saga was very much more complicated but I have shortened and simplified the story for brevity.
The people who have been affected by the cyclone are in for a long hard ride, the insurance companies will make it all the worse.
For us they didn't follow the spirit or letter of the policy and disputed the meaning of the phrase "full replacement". Mum and Dad had paid the policy on time for more than forty years before the earthquakes.
Our house and granny flat had no straight walls anymore, large gaps between the ceilings and the walls with dust drifting down from the roof space, the floors were like mini roller coasters and no longer level, doors jammed and would not close or open easily in the frames, hot water tank leaking, refrigerator failed from the shaking, brick chimney fell onto roof and rolled down roof and onto ground causing extensive damage, roof tiles broken by joists and rafters in the framing snapping and punching through the roof, sewage pipes broken and leaking, water main damaged and leaking, double brick walls all round the house damaged and split apart, some with big gaps, some you could sway the walls if you pushed them.
Mum went to live in an old peoples home and I stayed on in the damaged house with no hot water for more than four years before we got a settlement from the Insurance company.
The saga was very much more complicated but I have shortened and simplified the story for brevity.
The people who have been affected by the cyclone are in for a long hard ride, the insurance companies will make it all the worse.
For us they didn't follow the spirit or letter of the policy and disputed the meaning of the phrase "full replacement". Mum and Dad had paid the policy on time for more than forty years before the earthquakes.
It's not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable. The hundred-times-refuted theory of "free will" owes its persistence to this charm alone; some one is always appearing who feels himself strong enough to refute it - Friedrich Nietzsche