Kalistan

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Construction in Eveari is ongoing
"City will never be the same" says City Manager
Eveari, Grand Duchy of Ananto
February 5, 5709


Empty lots and areas still pepper city scape in Eveari but construction continues

It's been three and a half years since a major earthquake damaged much of the city of Eveari and displaced more than a quarter of a million residents. The city is slowly recovering, and has either restored or entirely rebuilt more than 40,000 housing units much of it in multi-family units, but there is still a significant amount of work to be done on the city. And some are saying that Eveari will never return to what it once was.

"Eveari's urban landscape is permanently changed by this devastating earthquake," said City Manager Kristin Berg, who has been overseeing reconstruction for the County of Eveari. "This city will never be the same. But this doesn't mean that we can't restore as much of it as possible. Some areas will likely be redesignated as greenspaces, some areas may change from homes to shops. The Earthquake, while very destructive to the city, also provides us with some opportunities to make improvements to better serve the needs and wants of the community where property concerns before and historic building status and things like this would have prevented it."

There is still a lot to do, though. "Many families who lived here have moved to other towns and cities across Kalistan, and will not be returning. The County office anticipates that more than 150,000 people who called Eveari home before the quake will not ever return to Eveari. That will obviously affect economic opportunity in the ancient city, but alternatively, it will ease a bit of the pressure on public services as well, so with everything there are positives and negatives. We are trying to focus on the positives, and though nearly all the evidence of destruction is cleared away, we are trying to see the scars on the city as chances to make the city better, stronger, more efficient, and more beautiful."

Still missing is the Ananto Estate, which was finally demolished last fall and now is completely gone. "The structure was just too heavily damaged for it to be habitable," said Berg. "Her Imperial Majesty made the decision to abandon efforts to save it, knowing that she would never feel safe with her family in such a heavily damaged building, and made the decision to demolish the place after as many objects of value, both monetary and sentimental could be safely removed from the property and stored." Of particular concern was the Imperial Gem Vault, which, while buried deep underground, also suffered some structural damage. "The access to the vault was damaged for the most part, so all of those precious stones were sealed up in a vault of reinforced concrete for the better part of a year, completely inaccessible. Much of the work on the property has been directed at building a new access to the vault and collapsing the old access point so that it could be checked out to see if the vault itself remained." The vault was structurally undamaged in the quake, besides being in a state of complete disarray. House Ananto is still working on plans to potentially rebuild a new home for the Empress on the property, "...but they have told us that rebuilding the city is more important at the moment," said Berg.

For now, life has by and large returned to normal for most of the residents of Eveari. "There's not a single person who lives here whose life wasn't touched in some way by this earthquake," said Berg. "Either we ourselves, or someone we know were injured, displaced, lost property, wondered if our loved ones were ok, that sort of thing. None of us who lived through it will forget what happened. But we are also recovering as a community and trying to put that devastating event behind us. We still have a lot of work to do, but now that we have some distance, in terms of time, from the event, we can focus on doing what needs to be done to move forward as a community, and finally see a new Eveari emerge from the ashes and rubble of the old."

In a note of optimism, Berg added, "I am excited to see what the future holds for this town."

@TheRepublic