Housing Minister Nick Smith
Subsequent to the Christchurch Earthquake in February 2011, Minister Nick Smith introduced the bill into Parliament which would require most buildings to be brought up to at least 34 per cent of NBS within a specific timeframe.
The rationale behind this arbitrary number is that buildings under 34 per cent are "likely to collapse in a moderate [100 per cent strength] earthquake". A large number of buildings in the Christchurch CBD were under 34 per cent and yet in a 200 per cent strength earthquake they did not collapse and in fact performed remarkably well.
The Seddon quakes of 2013 registered 100 per cent strength in parts of central Wellington and yet not one building collapsed - in fact there was almost zero damage. So the science is not settled on this and many leading engineers disagree strongly with the minister's approach.
The economic impact of the bill will be enormous - at least $1 billion in cost to save an estimated 24 lives in the next 100 years - that from MBI. The select committee has recently adopted the recommendations of Dr Anne Trower and others that much more important was the need to immediately secure building facades and parapets, the collapse of which caused the majority of injuries and death outside of the awful CCTV building. This work can be done for a fraction of the cost and save many more lives. Dr Trower is a senior lecturer in Public Policy at Lincoln University and was the sole survivor in a bus crushed by an unstable facade in Colombo St.
As the prominent economist Shamubeel Eaqub says, this bill is likely to cause zombie towns in provincial New Zealand in areas already suffering from population decline such as the West Coast. He describes this as "really bad policy. If we focused on what was likely to cause death and injury, we would have much better policy." His view is supported by Richard Bentley who says "the whole thing is just mismanaged and unfortunate, and a really stupid piece of policy making". Mr Bentley is a distinguished fellow of the Institute of Professional Engineers NZ and a director of GNS Science from 1991-1998.
What they suggest is "life risk analysis" as advocated by Ian Harrison - chairman of the lobby group Evidence Based Seismic Strengthening. Mr Harrison is principal of Tailrisk Economics and has worked with the Reserve Bank, the World Bank and the IMF. He has recently completed an assessment of the Hawke's Bay Opera House which has been closed by the Hastings District Council after a Detailed Seismic Assessment came back under the 34% threshold. What that study showed was the risk of death for a member of the audience in a 3 hour performance is about 110 million to 1. The odds of being killed in a 3-hour car journey home are 1.5 million to 1. As New Zealanders, we accept that risk as part of our everyday lives.
Driving a car or riding a bike are much more dangerous than using these supposedly "earthquake prone" buildings. The Government uses life risk assessment on drugs purchases through Pharmac and for roading improvements (NZTA) basing their calculations on $3.65 million per life saved. The same sort of robust analysis should be used in the case of this Building Amendment Act.
I understand for families who have suffered from the losses in Christchurch nearly five years ago there will be a feeling that no money should be spared to make all buildings safe. However, our governments are elected to make those difficult choices. It's about the allocation of finite resources.
Churches and racecourses are not dangerous places to visit and yet today churches that have been rated under 34 per cent NBS are being closed around the country because their leaders are afraid to make a stand. At Hawke's Bay Racing we have a number of buildings likely to fall under the 34 per cent threshold.
An Initial Seismic Assessment (ISA) indicates that our most at-risk building is the Cheval Room, an iconic Hawke's Bay single-storey wooden building. It's very hard to believe that this building is a real risk to life and limb.
A life risk analysis would again show the risk of loss of life from attending church or going to the races is at least 100 times less than driving a car or riding a bike.
I'm not arguing that "dangerous" buildings should be kept open. If a building is rated as dangerous, of course it should be closed and remediation work carried out (or demolition.) What Christchurch showed was that remediation work would have been relatively cheap, as it involved securing things like facades and parapets that are so dangerous when falling outward onto the streets. Outside of those circumstances, very few buildings were dangerous per se. Certainly the fact that a building is rated under 34% does not make it dangerous - the events in Christchurch proved that.
This is not intended as a criticism of those who have made decisions to close buildings due to fear of recriminations in the event of loss of life in an earthquake. Obviously one would expect engineers to err on the side of caution with their assessments - they are protecting themselves in the event of a disaster. But then add in the likely conservatism of our leaders in the same situation and you now have a ridiculous situation where good buildings are deemed uninhabitable.
The criticism is of the intended Government policy which creates this illogical climate of fear, when a sensible and rational approach to risk is what is required.
-Mick Ormond is Chairman of Hawke's Bay Racing Inc.
-Views expressed here are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz
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