Capital topples buildings before ’quakes do

Press, 25 February 1981, Page 21

Capital topples buildings before ’quakes do

The $2OO million-worth of commercial building construction now going on in Wellington is mainly happen- " ing because of increased perception of earthquakes striking the capita], says the city’s mayor. Mr Michael Fowler. The construction programme is bigger than any other in Australia and New Zealand. He says the intensity of the work is a dramatic indication of the Wellington City Council’s determination to get rid of the city’s most dangerous buildings. Mr Fowler gives three main- reasons for all the demolition and building activity: earthquake risk, the system of Wellington rating, and the present renovation trend in many capital cities of the world.

But it is the ever-present thought of a major earthquake which is ’ the most dominating reason for all the building activity now going on in Wellington, he says. “This is a. city at. risk.’’ Mr Fowler, who calls the building programme a “renaissance” for the city, says the wrecking of earthquakerisk buildings and their conversion into landfill has been “a considerable help” in making the capital safer from the effects of earthquakes. “Whatever may be said to the contrary, Wellington in 1981 is a much better place to be in a major earthquake than it would have been 10 years ago.” As far as earthquakes are concerned, the capital is “uniquely . vulnerable” amongst Commonwealth countries, he says. However, Wellington is not the only capital city in the world with such a problem: Mr Fowler said Bucharest, Tashkent and Mexico City were also at risk from earthquakes. Knowledge about earthquake experience from these cities has been incorporated into the Wellington council’s recognition of the need for drastic remedial work in the New Zealand capital. However, Mr Fowler says there is not much that can be done about one of the capital’s major problems, the old sea wall, “which is not too sound.” If the wall were to be badly damaged in an earthquake, most of the city’s central business ground area (built 'on reclaimed’ land), would be affected by liquefaction. Water would come up from the ground and the older badly founded buildings

would either subside or be surrounded by rising water. Mr Fowler said most of the buildings would stay, upright because their foundations extend to solid ground below the reclaimed land. But “great havoc” would ensue when gas, electricity and water and sewer mains were displaced or fractured. Mr Fowler says it is probably impossible to repair the sea" wall at this stage because of continuing reclamation work. Future building will be planned with earthquakes in mind. The likely risk of a major earthquake in Wellington is one of the criteria on which the Proposed District Scheme is based. Mr Fowler said the scheme will prohibit the construction of any building immediately adjacent to a known fault line. And the density of development in much of the reclaimed land — Lambton Quay and Victoria Street — will be controlled. The Mayor said the intensive building programme in the city has been stimulated by earthquake consciousness. In 1974 the council served

notice on 758 buildings, requesting that their owners demolish them, or strengthen them to meet earthquake criteria, within 10 years. That time span has "since been extended, until 1988. The current construction boom has also been stimulated by a trend of improvements amongst capital cities. This trend is reflected in major construction programmes in Canberra, Ottawa. Pretoria, Westminster and Washington. Mr Fowler says the third reason for Wellington’s present ' building boom is the system of rating in the city’, with the rates for a 15-storey building in Lambton Quay being virtually the same as those for a two-storey building occupying the same area of land. The council has been criticised for this by a world expert on urban reconstruction. The criticism came from Professor Adolph Ciborowski, deputy chairman of the Warsaw City Council and an acknowledged world expert on reconstruction and urban planning after major earthquakes, who recently visited Mr Fowler. Professor Ciborowski said

policies like Wellingtons were “dangerous” because they discouraged the retention of old buildings, thus helping to eliminate much of the historical character of a citv.

However, while Mr Fowler agrees that it is a fairly “heavy-handed” approach, the council’s present* policy will be maintained until Wellington’s .most dangerous earthquake risk area, the central business district, is improved. Mr Fowler says the central business district is populated by 65,000 people on a working day’, and the risk to life and property in an earthquake has to be minimised. Lambton Quay is the most heavily “pedestrianised” street in New Zealand, with more than 8500 pedestrians an hour using the street. This street is unique, Mr Fowler says, because it is the world’s longest "pedestrianised” street to be uninterrupted by cross-movement vehicular traffic.

All the buildings now being demolished are major earthquake risks, he says. All the Wellington demolition work, and the reason behind it, have served to remind Wellingtonians of the risk the city faces from earthquakes, says Mr Fowler. Mr Fowler says the council is to undertake a continuing public relations exercise to emphasise those risks, and to tell people what they can do to increase their survival chances’ in a disaster.

“We hope to make people aware of the need to assemble survival kits of canned food, torches, batterypowered transistor radios, water stores, to know where to go and what to do, and things like that. We also want them to support the civil defence people.” Is the city prepared for civil defence in a, major emergency? “I don’t think Wellington will ever be prepared for the type of disaster it is likely to experience” says the Mayor.

“In a disaster in Wellington there will inevitably be loss of life, and great loss of property. But this loss of life will be lessened by the citizens of Wellington if they are more aware of the problem, and they know what to do for themselves. “To many people, civil defence is just a big yawn — until a disaster happens.

“To most people the earthquakes which struck here in 1848, 1855, 1931 and 1942 seem a long way away. But the devastation they caused shouldn’t be forgotten.”