Which numb nuts thought this one up??

[kiwigeo]

My father's nursing home got totaled in the Christchurch earthquake of 22/2. He was evacuated from his room in the hospital wing of the complex and left all his possessions in the room.

Today my sister and brother were told they will be allowed into my dad's old room for exactly half an hour to recover his possessions.....only two people allowed in the room at one time.

So which bureacratic numb nuts decided that half an hour is long enough to clear out a room of my Dads belongings...including furniture and other larger items??? Who was the idiot who did the risk analysis on this one? They obviously deem it too dangerous to allow trained workers in to clear out the rooms and move stuff to another location where relatives could uplift same but they don't deem dangerous enough that they can't let civilians into the building?? This doesn't make any sense at all!!

Still trying to get my Dad back to Christchurch but allocation of nursing home beds is now under control of the District Hospital Board and theyve yet to organise themselves sufficiently to get things sorted. Another bunch of pathetic tax wasting bureaucrats....

I'm feeling the frustration and anger that many CBD business owners are feeling at the moment.

Martin

[Nick]

The whole time limit thing has me stumped too, by saying there's a limit of half an hour does that mean that if there's somebody still in the room exactly 35minutes after entry, the room's going to fall over? & as you say, half an hour is hardly enough time to remove somebody's posessions from a room (think they varied in the CBD from 1 -3 hours allowance, still not enough to remove much stock). This is what happens when pen pushers & paper shufflers (who have no grasp of the actual realities of rounding up stuff) are given power, they just have to set 'enforceable' rules to give them a sense of importance & cover their arse if anything goes wrong.
Hard hats are another joke, I'm not saying that they aren't effective but when in a building where the falling dangers are 25 tonne concrete beams, I'm not sure a plastic hard hat will stop it But it gets ridiculous when common sense goes out the window because the 'rules' state "you must wear a hard hat". When I was helping out at St John in the days following the quake (I was a kitchen bitch helping to feed the troops) I was told that "when going into the container that contained food items I must wear a hard hat!" Nobody who set this rule had looked inside the container to see that nothing was stacked any higher than waist height, think a pair of safety boots would've been more appropriate.
Can understand your frustrations & I'm guessing they won't diminish either as you say, places in homes are at a premium currently. Hopefully you will find a place for your Dad in a decent home (there aren't many! Ilam Homestead is one of the few I would recommend after seeing how many operated during my Ambo time), the one where they sent him initially is the same one I suspect they sent a lady I knew from Kate Sheppard...she'd died within 4 days after gross incompetence by the poorly paid staff.

[kiwigeo]

It gets worse. DHB apparently is allocating the 10 nursing home beds that become available each week with a priority given to Christchurch "residents". 8 beds are allocated to "residents" and 2 are allocated to evacuees like my Dad who are languishing in places such as Auckland. Because my Dad got evacuated he's not classed as a Christchurch resident and gets same status as anyone else resident outside Christchurch and wanting to move there.

Where's the fairness in all this???

Hard hats...yeah that's a good one. A hard hat required when working inside a container with nothing at or above head height.....thats well thought out.