211 Kilmore Street, Christchurch Central City, North Beach, Christchurch City

Firefighters Reserve

Christchurch City Community Halls

Where the Avon river flows underneath Kilmore Street at the intersection with Madras is a small patch of slightly controversial land named Firefighters Reserve, and a large sculpture upon it.
The sculpture placed here to celebrate the city's hosting of the 2002 World Firefighter's Games, is fashioned from an enormous hunk of steel from the World Trade Centre in New York which fell in 2001. Though the sculpture, by Christchurch Artist Graham Bennett, is well appreciated for it's stark message, the gift of the 5.5 tonnes of steel and the association with the New York terror attack has been misunderstood despite explanatory plaques at the site. In 2011 Christchurch called deeply upon it's own emergency services during a series of devastating earthquakes, and the city was saved by firefighters when the Port Hills caught fire in 2017. Christchurch City Council made this tribute to them at that time.
Unaffected by the earthquakes in Christchurch, the sculpture did temporarily leave it's site while the bridges here were repaired and it was reinstated in 2015. The Church across the river which hosted the sculpture during this hiatus is the Oxford Terrace Baptist Church.

Images Credit: By Scoro (Flickr: IMG_4375) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons and Schwede66 via Wikimedia Commons

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  • Bridge

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