Pastor Nigel Woodley
Flaxmere Christian Fellowship
(abridged)
Earthquakes vs car driving
We humans are lousy at assessing risk.
We happily drive around in our cars knowing full well that, this year alone, between 300 and 400 people will die from road accidents and another 3000 to 4000 New Zealanders will be seriously injured. We know the risk. We accept the risk. We continue to travel by car.
Now consider the number of deaths and serious injuries from earthquakes in the past 100 years. That covers a very long length of time before the recent rise in earthquake building standards. That hundred-year earthquake casualty number is barely more than the one-year casualty figures from road travel; and that is despite a rigorous long-term traffic safety improvement programme (seat belts, median barriers, drink-driving regulations, lower speed, safer cars etc)
So, in the last century, the old loose earthquake regulations resulted in about 1 per cent of the casualties compared to the heavily regulated road traffic sector. Yet lawmakers close down “risky” buildings while allowing us to still travel by car!
The building standards have risen for new builds. Fair enough. But why impose these same standards on existing buildings that have stood for decades and that pose a minimal risk to users compared to the risks of driving on the road? The enormous cost of bringing existing buildings up to a standard is not commensurate with the potential to save lives in an earthquake. The cost-benefit ratio is exorbitant.
The simple, cost-effective, statistically justifiable and commonsense action is to just inform the users of any building the relative risk of entering. Then let people themselves decide. Entering any building is, in the long term, much safer than driving by car.
Napier’s Waiapu Cathedral was built in the 1950s and 60s. It was built to the earthquake standard of the time. As it replaced the old 1931-earthquake-demolished cathedral on the same site, the designers would have been well aware of earthquake risk.
In 2024 this cathedral is now deemed below earthquake standards. It will take at least $20 million to strengthen. That money may not be found so the building may have to be abandoned or demolished.
The risk of a major failure of the building is negligible compared the risks of road travel.
Still, $20 million has to be found otherwise the cathedral’s six-decade history, current church culture, and community significance, will be lost. All because we humans are lousy at assessing risk.
Ross Corbett
Hastings
‘We’re all Kiwis together’
The attempted hit job on the new Government by Green List MP Hūhana Lyndon (HBT March 6) should not go unchallenged.
Under the new legislation, the Government expects to spend just as much on Māori health, simply not to waste it on extra bureaucracy.
Yes, they’re scrapping the tobacco ban, which, like all prohibition was just a pipe dream anyway. Where would that approach lead us in other facets? Māori obesity levels are above average, so ban Maccas and KFC? Māori alcohol consumption is high. Ban that too?
If, as Lyndon is patronisingly suggesting, Māori don’t have the strength of will to resist tobacco, why not simply pass a law just banning Māori access to it?
Or, we could say we’re all Kiwis together, with the same rights of access to services, and to everything else we choose to enjoy, good or bad.
John Denton
Eskdale
(abridged)
