The plan to recover vehicles from the cordoned area of Christchurch CBD is progressing well with more than 350 vehicles reunited with owners this weekend.
Tow trucks under Police supervision have been steadily flowing in and out of the cordon recovering vehicles to a collection area. Once Police have a vehicle out of the cordon some checks and balances are carried out and contact is then made with the owner so that collection can be organised.
374 vehicles have been physically returned to owners and collection arrangements have been made with an additional 114 owners. This process will continue daily.
There have been a small number of cases where checks have been carried out on retrieved vehicles, but no current details are available for the owner. Police obviously can't easily reunite a vehicle without those contact details so are reminding vehicle owners to register their vehicle with the recovery team on 0800 311 311 between the hours of 8am and 5pm.
It remains important that a vehicle is only registered once via the phone number and that the owner then waits for a follow-up call from Police to say the vehicle has been retrieved and is available for collection.
The focus to date has been on removing vehicles from parked on the streets where there are the least safety issues and this is continuing.
From Tuesday onwards Police will also be in a position to start retrieving vehicles from car park buildings within the cordon and will need owners to assemble with their keys to facilitate collection. The locations will be published on the Police website and media are asked to assist in widely publicising the details to provide owners with notice to attend the collection points.
Christchurch Media Liaison Team: 027 432 0960 or ChchPoliceMediaLiason@police.govt.nz
Public Affairs: 04 460 2986 or 04 474 9482