BUILDING FOR SAFETY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20800, 17 February 1931, Page 8

BUILDING FOR SAFETY.

The Prime Minister has made an announcement concerning the institution of building regulations, with a view to the need for compulsory observance of the principles of earthquake-resisting construction. A special committee is being set up. Its chairman is appointed. Presumably, the rest of its personnel, composed of building-construction engineers and architects, will be announced as soon as the persons selected have intimated their acceptance of appointment. Certain data, seismologiea] and geological, will be available for (he committee's consideration, as well as information gained from experiences in New Zealand earthquakes. Recommend-

ations are to l>e made to the forthcoming short session.of Parliament. This announcement is very welcome, and anything that must ho said in critical comment on it cannot 'dotract from the gratification that greets its making. Its reference to the use of data made available by recent New Zealand earthquakes, indeed, gives a satisfactory assurance that the lessons learned in June of 1929 are at last to be turned to practical account. Two things may be suggested as necessary to completely effective work by the committee. It should devote concentrated attention immediately to the situation in Hawke's Bay, and the regulations it frames should apply equally to every part of New Zealand. On the first point it is right to remember that the plight of many whose homes and businesses were in Napier and Hastings and adjacent places is serious. On reconstruction there they are pitifully dependent. The committee, if it be rightly constituted, will be able to offer authoritative advice concerning this urgent work, and it would be well to give it power to do so. As it may be reasonably presumed to be fully expert, this measure of anticipation of the acceptance of its recommendations could be granted. Concerning the areas to which the regulations are to apply when

gazetted there is no good reason for excepting any part of the Dominion. This is not to say that all parts are equally liable to earthquake disturbance ; but no part can be said to be absolutely free from risk. The facts registered by science show that no part of the world is wholly immune. Besides, as a matter of practical application, the demarcation of areas will involve sharply-defined lines, and it would be absurd to say that on one side of them there shall be regulation and on the other side none at all. Earthquakes have no such precise limits. Their effect is diffusive. Short of Dominion-wide application there is no feasible plan of territorial limits, and any attempt to make one of smaller scope would be a mistake.