Five years to clear quake rubble

Gareth James hopes three-quarters of the earthquake debris can eventually be reused. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Almost 100,000 tonnes of debris from demolished homes has been dumped at a site near Christchurch - but that is only 10 per cent of the expected final amount.

Removing all the rubble from the city will take up to five years, the operators say.

The Burwood Resource Recovery Park was set up within 12 days of the February 22 earthquake. There are two main sites - Area B and Area D - and extra space set aside for silt.

Area B contains rubble from demolished houses and small commercial businesses outside the CBD. Area D is a secure area containing the debris of buildings in which people died.

The rubble of each building lies in a line, marked by a signpost with the name of the site.

The rubble is monitored 24 hours a day by security guards and is being kept at the request of the coroner, who will eventually have it examined for anything that will help explain why buildings collapsed.

Neither area is open to the public.

Transpacific Industries Group NZ is running the site, working with contractors and the Christchurch City Council.

Transpacific's South Island general manager, Gareth James, said that in March and April trucks were arriving at Area B at the rate of one a minute to dump "mixed rubble" containing everything from a demolition site except rubbish.

"It's got everything in it. It's stuff that's jumbled up, everything you can't do anything with," he said. "The only buildings we have here from the CBD are in the sensitive area [Area D]. It's predominantly residential dwellings and small commercial buildings. There's not a lot of the big buildings here yet, but they will be coming. However it will be the innards rather than the big chunks, which if they can be demolished adequately, will be taken somewhere else."

The pace has slowed slightly since Civil Defence handed control of the city to the Christchurch Earthquake Recovery Agency, but demolition is expected to get back to full speed from next week.

Mr James says the pile, now several hundred metres long and the height of about three diggers, is only about 10 per cent of the estimated total amount of rubble.

It is made up of concrete, carpets, timber, metal, plastic, bricks, furniture, fencing, roofing and even soft toys.

Some of the lost teddy bears and dolls have been salvaged and placed around the white watchman's tent to brighten the atmosphere at what is essentially the graveyard for many Christchurch homes.

"It's a big, big job. There'll be everything in there, whole houses have been picked up so there'll literally be everything in there and the kitchen sink. But if we can take out bricks and clean them off they can be used for other stuff. Over the next five years we'll go through and recover as much as 75 per cent of it."

A sorting plant will be built on site, and by November staff will be working 16 hours a day, six days a week to clear the rubble.

With the help of a $9 million sorting machine, they will salvage everything that can be reused. The rest will go to the nearby Kate Valley landfill, and the area will be planted with trees once sorting ends.