Brian Rudman: Get earthquake-proofed... and you'll be ready for the big volcano blow

Photo / Graeme Mitchell-Anyon

When it comes to Auckland and earthquakes it's probably tempting fate to say a big one will never strike here. Look at Lorca, Spain. In last week's quake, the city castle lost its 13th century tower, which suggests that for at least 800 years locals have been saying the same thing about their town.

Let's just say "hardly ever", and not get too excited about the list of 393 or so pre-1940s earthquake-prone commercial buildings released on Saturday by the Auckland Council.

The thought of being compelled to don a safety helmet to walk around the corner for Sunday brunch at Andiamo's is hardly going to improve the city's vibrancy or liveability.

The fragile building list comes from the records of the old Auckland City Council, and in the main is made up of the character buildings that pepper the mainstream shopping strips of the isthmus. These are the unreinforced masonry shops and offices that emerged along the main routes out of the CBD between the 1880s and the 1930s.

The list of 393 inherited from Auckland City is just the start of the "problem". Yet to be recorded are their counterparts in the old townships of Devonport, Papakura, Henderson, Pukekohe and the other parts of "old" Auckland, which developed outside the old city council boundaries.

The Building Act requires councils to identify earthquake-prone buildings and to have a remediation programme.

Auckland City employed the gentle nudge approach, setting a "never never land" deadline of 2045 in most cases, for earthquake-proofing to be completed. The other isthmus councils were even more laid back, still getting round to the identification stage.

The new Auckland Council, with Christchurch fresh in the mind, begins public consultation on its policy in a month or so.

As the owner of a 100-year-old brick pile - or, after the big one, a possible pile of bricks - I have a more than academic interest in the debate, even if residential buildings are not part of this process. Lying in bed after Christchurch, contemplating whether the whole place would implode or I'd be lucky and end up with a dolls house, the front wall gone, but the rest of the house left standing, I took refuge in the scientists' reassurances that Auckland isn't in a quake zone.

Volcanoes, yes, Rangitoto blew only 600 to 700 years ago, but a big earthquake? Well never say never, but very very unlikely.

The official view seems to be similarly sanguine. That could be, in part at least, because the alternative approach is too draconian to contemplate. Insisting every building be brought up to modern earthquake-proofing standards, or be bowled, would not just be ruinously expensive to those affected, it would also risk denuding Auckland shopping strips of their distinctive heritage attraction.

How a politician - local or national - would find a way to justify such a step, given the slim odds of a big one hitting Auckland, is hard to imagine.

That's not to say Auckland Council couldn't front-foot the problem rather more vigorously than its predecessor councils. At the risk of my self-interest showing, it might be in both the community's and the property-owners' interests if the council were to take steps to educate property owners on ways of retro-fitting their buildings to improve their earthquake ratings, in ways that wouldn't break the bank.

In the Weekend Herald Canterbury University engineering associate professor Stefano Pampanin was one of a group of earthquake engineering experts to argue that retrofitting old masonry buildings was not necessarily expensive. If Auckland Council were to harness this advice, and prepare guidance material for property owners, there would be plusses all round. If nothing else, the character streetscape of the older parts of Auckland might get a new lease of life, thus fulfilling the heritage preservation obligations of the council. If, against the odds, a big quake did occur, lives and heritage would stand a better chance of survival.

And if a volcano were to erupt instead - and dozens of dead cones all around us are daily reminders that this is an equally likely scenario - the preserved masonry buildings might come into their own as refuges from the ash that has incinerated the surrounding quake-friendly villas.