Emma Ricketts’ article (“Stuck in a fault line”, March 9) has highlighted the important issue of earthquake standards for buildings and particularly their impact on heritage buildings.
The government’s approach to earthquake-prone buildings was changed in 2016 in two critical ways, both of which were backward steps from the 2004 approach.
First, the requirement for a building to be “likely to collapse” in moderate (33% NBS) shaking was dropped. Engineering calculation of “ultimate capacity” is now the sole determinant, resulting in many more buildings being classed as earthquake-prone than was envisaged in the 2004 legislation.
Second, the requirement for territorial authorities to write their own earthquakeprone-building policies was dropped in favour of centralgovernment control.
Under the 2004 legislation, each authority was required to have a policy on earthquake-prone buildings and to publicly consult on it before adopting it. Any authority could change its policy if it was not working for its local community.
Ricketts’ article graphically illustrates the impact of these changes and highlights the urgent need to change the legislative and technical settings that determine whether a building is earthquake-prone.
DCHopkins (Auckland)
The story on earthquake-prone buildings took me straight back to the Bank of New Zealand in Pāte a where my father was manager in the 1960s.
We lived in one of the three fine Palladian-style banks in Egmont St. It was wooden but had mock concrete blocks on its edges, which we climbed. There was a rickety fire escape on which my sisters and I sunbathed: it was such a good viewing
