Lesson for N.Z. —‘be prepared’

Press, 23 October 1989, Page 1

Lesson for N.Z. —‘be prepared’

NZPA Washington A Wellington engineer working on the San Francisco earthquake recovery says individual New Zealanders need to be better prepared for a similar disaster. Mr Bruce Shephard said a general understanding of earthquakes and how to survive them had helped San Franciscans cope well.

Mr Shephard, a structural engineer with the Works Corporation, has been in the worst-hit areas, advising residents about building risks after the earthquake.

“Californians are better educated than New Zealanders are,” he said in a telephone interview yesterday.

“There should be more preparedness among individuals.” The population of San Francisco, “confused but calm” after the shock, were now accepting what happened and what needed to be done next, he said. Mr Shephard’s decision to condemn one building had been accepted by its residents. “There’s been a lot of population training here,” he said. “People know about earthquakes

... about foreshocks and about aftershocks,” he said. New Zealanders could cope with a comparable earthquake disaster, “but they could do better with training,” he said.

Mr Shephard is leading a fivestrong team from the Society of Earthquake Engineers, which was in the city when the earthquake struck. He was confident New Zealand was well prepared through its existing civil defence systems. Mr Shephard was also confident New Zealand’s earthquake design standards, similar to those in San Francisco’s recent buildings, were adequate. “I would have expected there to be more damage over all, but there were only pockets of what I expected to find more generally.”

Damage reflected both the underlying ground conditions and the type of older buildings. There was wide agreement that the Oakland freeway collapse, which he inspected yesterday, had resulted from insufficient binding in the structure’s concrete reinforcing. Had the shock continued another 10 seconds, much more freeway of a comparable 1960 s design could have failed also, he added.

As engineers already knew, New Zealand had many reinforced concrete buildings with a similar design flaw.

“We know the detail (of reinforcing) is missing,” he said. But the biggest risk was with non-reinforced brick masonry buildings built before 1935, Mr Shephard said.