By Hamish Clark
As angels guard over the front of Christchurch’s Catholic cathedral, high up in a crane engineers survey the damage.
Heavily damaged in the February earthquake, the main dome of Christchurch’s Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament will have to be lifted off the basilica before it’s safe to enter.
The hundred-tonne dome above the altar was destabilised in the quake, and is threatening to topple.
Naylor Love project manager Peter Lockhart says the dome is “stable at the moment but it could, with another event, become quite unstable.”
“We are being careful and getting it down as fast as we can.”
The cathedral - which suffered over $30 million worth of damage in the February quake - has already lost one of its front towers, and the other is to be pulled down.
There is also extensive cracking to the wall and ceiling, and the organ pipes dangle from the upstairs balcony.
Until the dome has been removed, engineers are unable to enter and safely assess the damage, and decide whether or not the cathedral can be saved.
The top of the dome will be lifted off in the next four weeks, and the rest in stages, including the wooden balustrade inside
Lance Ryan, chairman of the Cathedral Management Board, is eager for the dome to be removed and damage assessed.
“The cathedral is extensively damaged. It is a lot worse than we first thought, and we will know more once the done comes off and the engineers can get inside and have a good look.”
The engineers are looking into other solutions to assess the church. One option being looked into is the possibility of sending in an electronic drone equipped with a camera, says Jamie Lester of Opus Engineering
While the assessors wait to get inside, heritage consultant Carole-Lynn Kerrigan is labelling each stone with a code of where it fell.
“We are doing our best to save it,” she says, “that is our main goal – to save it, take it apart, and rebuild it.”
But until the dome is removed, the Cathedral’s future remains unknown.
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