The royal commission set up to investigate the Canterbury earthquakes is already proving its worth. In mid-October, its presentation of an interim report was a key step in getting rebuilding under way. Now, with the situation back on a more even keel, it is an appropriate time for it to ask why particular structures in Christchurch, including the Pyne Gould Corporation building, the Canterbury Television building and the Hotel Grand Chancellor, collapsed and what could have been done to prevent lives being lost. The present phase of the hearing is focusing solely on the PGC building. Much of what has been said is bound to have caused consternation.
Workers and tenants in the 40-year-old building were repeatedly told after the first earthquake, on September 4 last year, that it was safe to occupy despite cracks in its columns and a main load-bearing wall. When it collapsed during the February 22 quake, 18 people died. Yet these victims, and others in the building, had been reassured by as many as five separate engineers' reports over several months. Any fears they had must have been similarly placated by the green sticker placed on the structure a day after the first jolt, following a rapid assessment by Christchurch City Council officials.
On that sticker was the phrase "no restrictions to use of occupancy". According to the council, wording beneath this was meant to emphasise that a more comprehensive inspection initiated by the building's owners could reveal safety hazards. "Clearly, we didn't want to say this building is safe to occupy," a council manager told the hearing. But to those who worked in the building, the reverse must have been conveyed by the colour of the sticker and what must have seemed its chief message.
Comments by engineers to the inquiry have been equally alarming. One, who did three checks, admitted that he had not referred to previous reports on the building held in the file of his employer, Holmes Consulting. These highlighted structural weaknesses and featured modelling performances of the structure. An earlier report by Plant & Building Safety had concluded the building was "potentially earthquake-prone", while the Lim report described it as "earthquake-prone". The engineer, however, restricted himself to doing a basic visual inspection, as, he said, was his brief. Asked if given the deficiencies in the information he had, it was still open to say the building was okay to occupy structurally, the engineer replied that he believed it was.
Such comments will surely horrify most people. Successive engineering reports from September to late January, some occasioned by occupants' concern about cracks, must have allayed any concerns when they were conveyed to tenants and staff. The conduct of the engineers or the processes under which they worked appear untenable, given the previously published doubts about the building. There seems to have been an over-readiness to adopt the best-case scenario, rather than take the pragmatic step of recommending a more comprehensive inspection, which would have closed the building.
