BUILDING CONSTRUCTION

Hawera Star, Volume L, 17 February 1931, Page 5

BUILDING CONSTRUCTION

EARTHQUAKE INVESTIGATION. IDEAS FOR. PARLIAMENT. itftegrapu— JE test* AtiauoiaLU/a.y WELLINGTON, Feb. 16. The Prime Minister announced today that in order that as full information and recommendations as. pos sible regarding building regulations should be made available for the forthcoming short session of Parliament he had set up a special committee under Professor J. E. L. Cull, Professor of Civil Engineering at Canterbury College to report on the question. The personnel of the committee would be announced later, but it would include representative building construction engineers and architects. The Prime Minister has arranged that information collected by the Public Works Department and the Department of Scientific and industrial Research regarding the finding of geologists in the fidld concerning the cause of the earthquake, also evidence deduced from instrumental records and from actual buildings regarding the forces experienced) during the recent earthquakes in New Zealand, shall he placed before the committee. Consideration will be given to areas m winch building regulations for earthquake resistance appear from the evidence to be desirable. Naturally the committee will have serious regard to the influence of any proposed regulations on the cost or buildings and it is hoped that by tlie unification and standardisation of bylaws relative thereto greatly increased resistance to the stresses due to earthquakes may be achieved without undue increase in cost.