There was a huge will to do what needed to be done to fix things, and there was an enormous amount to fix: over 700,000 total Earthquake Commission (EQC) claims across all categories; 167,000 severely damaged residential properties; 1,800 CBD buildings completely destroyed, needing demolition; and out in the suburban industrial areas even more. There were many, many schools that could not continue to have occupation. The university was badly damaged, along with Ara and other tertiary institutions. The experience from the 4 September earthquake through to that 22 February day, along with a great deal of reading that I did about disaster response, made me very clear in my thought that there needed to be a very sound structure that allowed decisions to be made as quickly as possible. 