Article from Mainland Press, 7 March 2013. Tom Doudney interviews Deb Donnell about the earthquake influenced Christchurch Books, Café Reflections and Responders.

Response teams and coffee scenes inspiration for books

Deb Donnell has just released her second earthquake-influenced book in four months, Responders, co-authored with Pete Seager. It comes hot on the heels of October’s Café Reflections, a loving tribute to our lost inner city, centred around its cafés. Tom Doudney recently caught up with the Christchurch author.

WHEN Deb Donnell started writing her homage to life and cafes in central Christchurch in 2007, she never imagined that in fewer than five years many of the places she was writing about would be no more.

Ms Donnell had begun Café Reflections “almost as a journal”, recording her thoughts, observations and experiences of daily life within the four avenues in short 20-minute stints at various cafés.

“I always thought it would be something I would do but was it going to be a guidebook, a lifestyle motivational book. A history book was never anything that crossed my mind – which I guess is what it really is, a history book.”

Following the February 2011 earthquake, Ms Donnell updated the book to include what had happened during and after the earthquakes and the status of many well-known businesses and building up until the second anniversary of the original September 4, 2010 shake.

Pete Seager, having learned of the still unfinished Café Reflections, approached her to see if she would be interested in helping out with his own project recognising the contribution made to rescue and recovery efforts in the wake of the February 2011 earthquake by New Zealand’s volunteer response teams – Responders.

Originally, Mr Seager had been envisaging a small print run of between 200 and 300 copies; however Ms Donnell believed there was the potential to do something more extensive.

“I looked at it and thought ‘this is a story that has to be put out to the public. It’s not going to be a small publication that’s just going to sit there within a small select group, it’s getting out there’. So I took it from what was going to be just a pretty small document as such and turned it round into 200 pages of stories and photos.”

The main purpose of the book was to give the response workers [volunteers] the recognition they deserved, not just for their efforts during the earthquake but for all the work they had done before and since then.

“These guys support the emergency services when they are overwhelmed so [for instance] last weekend the Canterbury teams did flood rescue training. Other teams have gone out and

helped paragliders get out of trees. Auckland teams helped with tornadoes – rescuing pets, covering the roofs of houses with tarpaulins, that sort of thing – they do everything.

“Before the earthquakes I didn’t even know they existed.”

The royalties from sales of Responders will go [went] to the Canterbury Earthquake Survivors Trust.

Aftermath: After the earthquake several response teams were tasked to search the rubble piles for missing people in the CBD. The scene pictured took place on March 2, 2011 at the Manchester / Lichfield / High Street intersection.
Photo from Responders