‘That’s not what an insurance contract is about,’ Andrew said. ‘They’re given the money to get them back into an equivalent house, not necessarily that exact house. Insurance is about protecting their financial position, not about protecting the house itself. And the way insurance companies are settling now, people can do that, go and buy another place and sell the damaged place as it is.’
Alice nodded. It kind of made sense. Then again, not really. ‘Insurance thinking and common sense don’t really go together, do they?’
‘Insurance is a legal contract, and it goes by the law,’ Andrew said.
‘Not by common sense,’ Alice said.
‘That’s not what I said.’
‘Okay, but the damaged place, it could be repaired for a lot less than the settlement?’
‘In a lot of cases. As when new is a pretty high standard, that’s what the insurance companies are paying out, it can be a lot higher than a repair that just gets the place back into a reasonable state.’
‘But are they paying that out?’ Alice said. ‘My grandparents, my other grandparents, have a neighbour who was paid out for repairs, he had a scope and everything, but when he went to get a builder sorted, he couldn’t afford to fix the house. Even if he stuck to the scope.’ She didn’t say anything about what Lindsay and Kevin were dealing with, it was none of Andrew’s business.
Andrew nodded. ‘That does happen,’ he said. ‘People don’t do their homework.’
‘But what if the insurance company didn’t help him to do his homework?’ Alice said.
‘That’s not their job,’ Andrew said.
‘But they’ll say, I don’t know, they say we’re looking out for you, like in the ads. It doesn’t seem to be very looking out for you if they force the homeowner to settle for less than they know it will take to fix the place.’
‘Insurance is not a social service, Alice,’ Andrew said. ‘It’s a business.’
‘Then they shouldn’t be allowed to advertise themselves as though they’re benign and generous.’
‘Maybe they shouldn’t,’ Andrew said. ‘But I think that’s a conversation you need to have with the Commerce Commission.’
Later, Lindsay came home with Olivia and Jack and a hot chicken. Lindsay pulled it apart and made a salad while Olivia and Jack sat in the lounge with Alice telling her about their day and how there had been so many people at the beach. Jack had decided he wanted to be a lifeguard when he grew up, looking out for the people swimming and surfing.
It wasn’t long before Alice went to bed. She had opened up the windows earlier to cool the room down, but it was still too hot to get to sleep quickly. She lay in bed looking out the window. Cloud was piled high in the classic nor’west arch.
Alice’s bedroom was on the front of the house, facing the street. She remembered one night when she was still in high school. She saw lights flashing outside. She pulled back the drapes and a white four-wheel-drive was moving slowly down the street, purple and yellow lights flashing. It looked like a security patrol and seemed odd, a little frightening even. What were they looking for? Soon another ute came into view, same make, same flashing lights. But that second ute had a sign on it saying ‘House Follows’. The next vehicle was a truck carrying the promised house, a weatherboard affair in what might be cream, though it was hard to tell so late at night. On the side facing Alice was a single long window. It wasn’t exactly an exciting house. The house truck was followed by another four-wheel-drive. Three vehicles, looking out for the house and for the neighbourhood it was passing through. Now, though, it seemed no one was really looking out for the city’s houses.
Alternatives
January 2015
Alice was going on a tramp with Andrew, Charlotte and two of her half-brothers. It was a five-day tramp in the Lewis Pass a couple of hours away from Christchurch, and on the drive up there, the two boys talked about the big earthquake the week before. They wondered if they would feel aftershocks and were excited at the possibility. The quake had been a 6.0 in magnitude, on the western side of the South Island, under the mountains near Arthur’s Pass. It had been felt throughout much of the South Island, and Alice had been in the kitchen having breakfast when she felt the house sway, the ground swelling up under her feet. She knew it was from further away than those in the Christchurch sequence and she pushed away thoughts of panic at the possibility of people being harmed. If it was remote, it wouldn’t be a problem.
‘We’re too far north to feel any aftershocks,’ Charlotte had told them. ‘Of course if the Alpine Fault goes, we’d definitely feel that.’ She explained to them the risk the Alpine Fault posed to the whole South Island, that it was expected to generate a magnitude eight quake sometime in the next fifty years.
Both Liam and Hugo were in their teens now, but only Liam was old enough to have any solid memories of the months following the September quake. They had spent most of 2011 and 2012 away from Christchurch and so the trauma of ongoing aftershocks was something they knew about but didn’t feel. Even nearly four years on, Alice still felt her heart race at a big aftershock, that moment of fear over what could be about to happen.
They left Andrew’s truck in the carpark and started along the track, getting into the rhythm of putting one foot in front of the other. The first day was easy, just four hours walking that was mostly flat until a final climb up towards the first hut.
Alice had been pleased to get away from the atmosphere at home and up into the mountains. On the drive up to the track, she hadn’t been able to get her family’s situation out of her mind. It was in her head, churning away, over and over, what had happened to Lindsay and Kevin in the past year and what they faced in the year to come. What the insurance company was doing was wrong, going ahead with a repair that ignored damage anyone could see, over the objections of the homeowner, the person paying for the insurance policy.
After Christmas, Kevin had taken Olivia and Jack down to Timaru to stay with their cousins for a couple of weeks. Both Lindsay and Kevin said they should be having fun during the holidays and hanging around their stressed parents was in no way fun. They were right, it wasn’t fun at all, but Alice thought sending the kids away was a bad idea. It gave Lindsay and Kevin an excuse not to make an effort. Instead, they were just at home, doing their own thing, reading or playing games on a tablet or the laptop, barely talking because they couldn’t figure out what to do next about the house. Having the kids at home would have forced them to put the house situation to the back of their minds, eventually.
An hour into the walk, she dropped back to where Andrew was bringing up the rear and let the others get ahead.
‘Can I ask you some legal stuff?’ she said. Although Alice had talked to Andrew about insurance company behaviour in general, she had never mentioned Lindsay and Kevin’s situation to him. But he might be aware of what was going on if his parents had told him, Alice regularly talked to Gerald and Sylvia about how worried she was about what would happen with the repair of the Bowen house.
‘About insurance?’ he said. He smiled to encourage her. Andrew was one of those people who enjoyed their work and enjoyed talking about it outside of work.
‘About Mum and Kevin,’ she said.
She explained, as briefly as she could. Lindsay and Kevin weren’t happy about the proposed repair, it seemed to ignore quite a bit of damage. What they were especially unhappy about was that the original scope of works had said the whole foundation needed replacing, but now they were only going to do part of it. But the insurance company was insisting on going ahead with the repair to the point where they had received a building consent.
‘How has the insurance company responded to their engineering report?’ Andrew said.
‘With more reports from their own engineers restating their belief that their own strategy meets the policy,’ Alice said. ‘Mum and Kevin don’t know whether to get their engineer to fire back or if that’s just pouring more money down the drain.’
‘If the insurance comp
any isn’t going to pay attention to the first engineer’s report, there’s no point,’ Andrew said. ‘It sounds like they need a lawyer.’
‘But Kevin doesn’t want that,’ Alice said. ‘I think he thinks it sends the wrong message, that they want to sue.’
‘It does send a message,’ Andrew said. ‘It says that they’re serious about getting their policy honoured.’
They were walking side by side along the track, and Alice looked across at him. ‘He says there are plenty of other alternatives to try before getting a lawyer,’ she said. Andrew restrained a laugh. ‘But I’m not convinced that there’s anything effective.’
‘No, there’s nothing really,’ Andrew said. ‘If you go to the ombudsman, you need to go through all the insurance company’s processes...’
‘... and get a letter of deadlock,’ Alice smiled at him. ‘I know, I looked at that, but it seems to take a long time. And there have been so many things done the wrong way that it’s hard to know where to start.’
‘You could see about getting their file,’ Andrew said. ‘From the insurance company.’
‘Can you do that?’
‘Make a request under the Privacy Act, they’re entitled to the information, it is about them. They don’t need a lawyer to do that.’
Andrew told her to get Lindsay and Kevin to write the insurance company’s privacy officer requesting their whole file. It might take a bit of time, he said, but they should be able to get more information than they already had.
‘I’ll do that,’ Alice said. She was relieved at having another possibility. Maybe Lindsay would let her help out with getting through whatever information they received. They would have to act quickly if the insurance company was determined to get the repair underway. The claims manager had already said they would meet in the new year to discuss temporary accommodation.
But having an alternative that Lindsay and Kevin would find acceptable relieved Alice of her worries about what was happening at home. She was finally able to relax and start enjoying the scenery, being in the sun in the mountains, the air fresh and warm. Soon they started the climb up to the first hut and the effort wiped the last vestiges of her worries from her mind. At the top of the climb, they reached a plateau that stretched out towards the first hut, the mountains and the clear blue sky behind it. This was the point of tramping, escaping civilisation, feeling the weight of it all falling away.
On the Move
February 2015
Alice started running following the September quake, when she moved home. Then she had found it difficult to sleep at night, always waking to aftershocks. Or, on quiet nights, she had trouble falling asleep until there was an aftershock. Running wore her out, making it easier to fall asleep.
Although she had grown up in the neighbourhood, she saw it in a different way after the September quake. The constants were the lines of the hills, the jutting points, the hill that looked like it had a nipple, the crag of Castle Rock, when it still looked like a castle. She wished she had paid more attention when she was a child, so she could compare, assemble some sort of history of Alice then, Alice now, and construct some sort of journey, rather than the random wanderings that had made up her life so far.
She needed to make decisions. No one was putting pressure on her, no one but herself. At first, after she left university, Lindsay had tried to talk to her about why she had decided to do so. But it always felt like Lindsay was trying to talk her into going back, so Alice discouraged those conversations. She did talk to Gerald and Sylvia about it, they didn’t really seem to judge one way or the other, but she could only get so far, she wasn’t sure herself why she had decided to leave university, it was more a feeling that staying was no longer possible. Now, four years later, she had worked in a café, in the insurance industry and for her grandfather’s building company. After all that, the only thing she knew for certain was that going back to university and continuing with her engineering degree was not an option.
She had started running more often over the summer. She had found it hard to go more than once a week the last couple of years, working full time, feeling so overwhelmed by the circumstances Lindsay and Kevin found themselves in and looking around, seeing other people in the family going through similar things. But Charlotte had pestered her to make the time and lately they were running three nights a week and Sunday mornings.
It was Sunday morning and Charlotte met Alice at the house. Charlotte had her restricted licence and was enjoying the freedom of being able to drive herself anywhere she wanted to go. Charlotte wanted to run the City to Surf, the annual walking and running event that started in the city and finished at the beach, but since the quake it had started in the southwest of the city, at Pioneer Stadium and ended at Ferrymead. So not the City to Surf, more like the Spreydon to Ferrymead, which just didn’t sound right to Alice. She was holding out for the return of the real thing, she told Charlotte, she would see it as normality finally returning to the city. Charlotte didn’t feel as strongly about doing the ‘right’ City to Surf as Alice did, but she understood why Alice did and said yes, they would do the first real City to Surf together, and until then, they would just keep practising.
Alice wondered why they hadn’t taken the start of the event back to the city centre. The city was open, after all, and there was a lot happening, new buildings going up all the time, it was looking great. She thought it might be because of the state of the eastern suburbs. The City to Surf drew publicity, and having people running through suburbs that were still in a woeful state following the quake would reveal the lie of how well the rebuild was going.
For the morning, Alice and Charlotte had decided to go up the Rapaki Track and back down the Huntsbury Track. It was about ten kilometres all up, but there was a café at the bottom of the hill that did a pretty good brunch.
They left Charlotte’s car near the café, then started towards the road that led up to the track, their warmup. The day was going to be hot, and they were starting early to avoid overheating.
At the gate that marked the start of the track, Alice and Charlotte began jogging up the hill. The day warmed up quicker than expected and when they reached the saddle that looked down onto the Avoca Valley and the estuary, they stopped to take a drink. They sprinted to the top of the track, where there was a slight breeze.
On the run down, Alice told Charlotte she had decided not to go back to finish her engineering degree.
‘Everyone expects me to,’ Alice said, ‘but you’re not surprised. Why not?’
‘I don’t know,’ Charlotte said. ‘I just can’t see you doing it.’
‘Well what can you see me doing?’ Alice said. ‘Because I could use some help in that area.’
‘Why? Aren’t you going to stay with Gerald?’
‘For now,’ Alice said. ‘But I need to figure out something else, I don’t think I want to be filing paperwork and making phone calls forever.’
‘Well what then?’
‘I don’t know,’ Alice said. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Hey I still have a year of high school to go,’ Charlotte said. ‘I don’t need to make up my mind for another year.’ Charlotte had failed her exams the previous year and was repeating Year 13. But she had switched schools and was feeling much better about the change.
‘If you don’t make up your mind, there’s always accounting!’ Alice said. Charlotte’s parents were both accountants.
‘No way!’ Charlotte said and sprinted ahead of Alice.
Alice caught up to her.
‘You know what I hate about now?’ Charlotte said.
‘What do you mean by now?’
‘Now. This part of my life,’ Charlotte said. ‘I hate that I have to make a decision about what I’ll be doing for the rest of my life.’
‘Do you?’ Alice said. ‘I mean, what says we can’t change?’
Charlotte thought about that for a moment. ‘You’d have to go back to university, get another degree.’
<
br /> ‘That’s what they tell you at school, but most of the people I’ve been working with have never been near university,’ Alice said. Her friends from uni, from that first year, had finished their degrees and quite a few of them still didn’t have reliable jobs. So not only were they doing the type of office work that Alice was doing, they were also paying off student loans. Although not going back to university in 2011 had almost been an accident, something she had only half decided, it had turned out better for her, because she knew, without a doubt, that engineering was not for her, and she had discovered that while earning money, not while accumulating student debt.
‘I don’t think my parents would be too happy if I didn’t go to university,’ Charlotte said.
‘Do you want to go?’
‘I don’t know,’ Charlotte said. ‘I don’t want to do commerce. That’s what Mum and Dad want me to do.’
‘What do you want to do?’ Alice said.
Charlotte shrugged uncertainly, but there was a glimmer in her eyes. She had something in mind. ‘I’m really enjoying my writing courses.’
‘No one makes a living writing,’ Alice said, and cringed inwardly. It was something her mother would say.
‘I’d mix it with something else,’ Charlotte said. ‘I’m thinking of doing a science degree, then I’d go to Otago, they have a science communication course. Maybe do science journalism.’
‘Wow, you’re really serious about this,’ Alice said, surprised at how well-formed Charlotte’s plans were.
It was time Alice started formulating her own plan.
Cash Settling
March 2015
The Canterbury Home Repair Programme run by Fletcher EQR and the private insurers’ project management organisations were, in theory, supposed to make the recovery process easier for the region’s homeowners. The idea was that the insurer, or EQC in the case of the CHRP, would manage everything, get the job done and get people back into their homes as soon as possible. But as the months and years passed, it was clear to Alice that this strategy had been put in place to contain costs for the insurers and EQC, not to make their customers’ lives better.
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