Features

On a normal day, Sam Johnson is a Canterbury University student majoring in Law and Political Science. Unleash a natural disaster onto his city, however, and Sam becomes one of the co-ordinators of the army of student volunteers working tirelessly to restore Christchurch to its former glory. Each suburb takes around two days to clean up and scrub down as over 1000 young people descend with shovels and wheelbarrows to clear streets and houses of the devastation caused by the earthquake on February 22. Georgie Fenwick caught up with Sam last week while he was in Shirley where the troops were muckin' in hard.
How is it all going up there today?
It is really good today. We have about 1100 people today, the numbers are just about perfect. At the moment, we have two very different systems that we are running and the first one is called “Mass Deployment”. We take twenty-two buses out each day to the suburbs.

The other part is called “GeoOP”. It is a programme that we have designed and incorporated into a business model that was already up and running. If you go to www.sva.org.nz., you click either “I want to help” or “I need help”. That takes you through to the next level and if you want help you enter your name, address, details and what you would like to happen. It works really well.

 
Did you get that up and running last year?
Yes we did. At the very end of the project we had people emailing in and registering their requests. We used it for the last two days but not to the same extent at this time round.
 

How have you been received by the community this time around?
We have had the most amazing donations of food and money and equipment and product. The reaction from the community has just been overwhelming. I have had quite a few people on the phone crying. The guys on the street are really seeing the impact they're making. I think that's really good, I think it's really important for young people to get out into the community to see what a difference that a little bit of your time can make.

 
What was your personal experience of the quake?
Ironically, I was at an Emergency Management Conference in Wellington. The worst thing was I was there with every other Civil Defence person in the country. We joked that morning about how  it would be funny if there was a big disaster and we were all in the same room.
 

Oh dear, who made that joke?
The Minister of Civil Defence and the speaker and the next speaker. All three of them made some sort of little crack at it. Then we were all standing around having lunch and I was talking to a GeoNet consultant who updates their Facebook and is in charge of the internet. Then suddenly everyone's pagers went off and they started rushing round. The Civil Defence manager from Christchurch who I had been sitting next to all morning said, “there has been another big quake in Christchurch” and ran out of the room with his briefcase. We stood around for a few minutes thinking, “oh, it won't be a big one” and then everything started to get urgent and someone got a text on her phone saying it was 6.3 and she was like “fuck, double fuck”. It was a whole new quake.
 
I went to the airport and couldn't get on a flight so I stormed in with my pass for the Emergency Management conference and pretended I was a Civil Defence person and got a seat on a Hercules.  But then I decided I to put myself on a plane to Blenheim and I ended up driving down with some reporters. We got here about half past three in the morning. The next day we started to get all the plans into place, figuring out what we wanted to do and how to make it work.

 
How were the lunches received?
Amazingly. That’s been the best part, making sure everyone gets fed and everyone gets a free lunch. The support we are getting from Dunedin and Wellington and everywhere else is just amazing!

 
Will you be continuing on for much longer?
We will have to see at the end of the week but I think we will be largely wrapped up by next week