Regan Hughes: The Christchurch quake has been a disaster on the scale that people outside of the city and those unaffected by the loss of life probably can't comprehend. From an outsider's point of view, there have been small signs of silver linings come out of the disaster.
For us, the quake has seen one of our primary network sites in Christchurch condemned. As I write this, it is on a countdown to demolition.
In the days following the disaster, as our engineers worked tirelessly to re-route customers away from our primary site on Gloucester Street, I was amazed at the attitude of both our customers and our competitors.
Not only did our partners (special thanks to Alcatel-Lucent) call us to offer equipment, but we also had calls from people who don't provide us services to offer their enthusiastic support (thanks particularly to Vector Comms) to get a new site setup on the ground to complement our second core site on the Port Hills (which miraculously was OK).
Working with FX Networks and Enable to maintain customer services was all about making the necessary changes quickly, with no mention of contracts or commercials.
We found out pretty early that the Gloucester Street site was in bad shape and not accessible. Then it was a race against the clock (and the back-up diesel) to get customers to the new site.
From all around country our field techs volunteered to drive customer spares and pick-up supplies for our teams and their families down there. I can't imagine what it would be like to be on the ground experiencing those aftershocks and I admire the courage of the people who put their hand up - not to mention those on the ground who continued to turn up to work.
Behind the scenes our engineers in Auckland and Wellington were working 16 hour days to arrange the logistics and organise the complex migrations involved to ensure key customers like TV3, The Radio Network and 2Degrees stayed up and running.
Two engineers - Todd Curran and Kevin Ng, in particular - bore the brunt of a lot of this work, supporting guys such as Ian Lester who was on the ground in Christchurch navigating the cordons, the aftershocks, and risking life and limb to retrieve critical spares from our damaged spares holding.
Although I can't comprehend the loss that many people are feeling, or the stress of experiencing continual after-shocks with no sleep, it's reassuring to see that when times are tough, people pull together. I hope that people in Christchurch keep pulling together and the city comes out stronger and better because of it.
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