30 | STORAGE KING FERRYMEAD, NZ
CHRISTCHURCH NINE YEARS ON by Geoff Adams Storage King, Ferrymead.
I
t might seem like only yesterday. Still, it was nine years ago in February 2011 that the fastest accelerating natural disaster the world has ever seen happened in Christchurch, New Zealand. A magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck Christchurch. The quake was centred 10km south-east of the city at a depth of 5km. One hundred eighty-five people died, 164 people were seriously injured, and there was significant, widespread damage. SSAA Member, Storage King Ferrymead was in the middle of the quake, as the suburb of Ferrymead sits very close to the epicentre of where it struck. The epicentre was just a few kilometres away as the crow flies, so as a result, the facility was “a bit banged up”. The main damage was that some of the walls and floors had separated at the
INSIDER 111 FEBRUARY / MARCH 2020
construction joints, which is what they are designed to do in an earthquake. However, they needed to be fixed, which required a new ring foundation to pull the buildings back into line. Now nine years later and approximately $2.5m spent on the facility, it is now safer than it has ever been, with several kilometres of reinforcing bars and many tons of concrete. The Ferrymead Branch is now possibly the strongest, purpose-built, storage facility in the country. The last jobs to do were the alarms, drains and driveways. This was probably the most challenging task, as you may see from the images. It was hugely disruptive to staff and customers, and the facility was closed for six weeks while this happened. Luckily the customers understood, and 90% of them stayed away while the works
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