The events of the past week reflect a slow awakening of property owners around New Zealand to a seismic risk never contemplated before the earthquakes in Christchurch, long considered a relatively earthquake-free area.
Last Friday Wellington’s Dominion Post editorial questioned why government buildings prone to earthquake risk were being closed.
On Monday, after a magnitude 5.7 weekend earthquake centred near Picton, the newspaper featured an article questioning why one of the capital’s newest buildings had suffered damage.
Window louvres at the Meridian building on the waterfront were damaged and required replacing. The green rated building was developed and built by Dominion Funds (now DNZ). Meridian has a long lease on the upper floors.
The events of the past week reflect a slow awakening of property owners around New Zealand to a seismic risk never contemplated before the earthquakes in Christchurch, long considered a relatively earthquake-free area.
The hundreds of government buildings currently being assessed for seismic risk are just the beginning, with potential to make the leaky building fallout seem a minor issue.
The Ministry of Justice has closed six court buildings and is looking at 674 other buildings, including 374 police stations.
In Wellington the city council has been pro-active in recent months in giving property owners deadlines to fix up older buildings that are major risks.
Other councils around the country have also compiled registers of potentially risky buildings but have yet to decide what to do with them.
Auckland appears to be dragging the chain.
An Auckland Council panel recently recommended secrecy for a list of earthquake-prone buildings in Auckland. One of the panel members, Penny Webster, was concerned about the effect on property rights if the list was revealed.
These concerns were condemned by some local commentators.
The same reasoning – concern about property rights and disruption to business – arguably contributed to the loss of nearly 200 lives in the Christchurch February earthquake.
The Royal Commission into the earthquakes has heard over the past fortnight how five engineering reports cleared the damaged Pyne Gould buildings in Cambridge Terrace between the first September 2010 earthquake and before the devastating February 2011 earthquake.
The findings of the commission are likely to dominate property issues during 2012 as property owners come to grips with the cost of strengthening versus the cost of doing nothing.
