Anyone building an entertainment centre for children could be expected, where safety is concerned, to leave nothing to chance.
When the building is a multi-storeyed multiplex of cinemas, built around an open pit of escalators, the dangers presented by low ledges overlooking the chasm hardly need to be explained. Yet at the new Imax cinema centre in Queen St, part of a recent development literally under the eye of the Auckland City Council's offices, a glaring hazard was created.
Low internal apertures, open to a 30m drop, offered the only outlook for those milling about a cinema ticketing lobby. A bar above the inside edge of the window ledges, probably designed to discourage sitting, might only encourage longer-limbed youths to perch at a more dangerous angle, leaning back over the void.
It is not entirely clear from reports how 16-year-old Danial Gardner fell out the window to his death. But it seems inevitable that somebody would, sooner or later. Friends of the secondary school student say he leaned back to try to sit on the rail and they tried to catch him. Whatever happened, it would have easily been avoided if a higher rail or a second rail had been installed.
It is bad enough that a place designed to attract children, and which has paid attention to safety in many areas, should have any shortcomings. It is doubly disgraceful that the authorities - notably the Occupational Safety and Health inspectorate - should be so reluctant to act after Danial Gardner died. Initially OSH declined even to investigate the fatality, insisting that the ledge complied with the building code. Furthermore, OSH insisted, the accident was beyond its jurisdiction because it had not happened to an employee of the multiplex.
The agency seemed unaware that the Health and Safety in Employment Act was amended in 1998 to make owners of workplaces answerable for hazards to anybody in the vicinity, "including people in the vicinity solely for the purpose of recreation or leisure." That surely covers patrons of a cinema or any place open to the public, as OSH now concedes. Yet relatives of the dead boy said yesterday that they had received a visit from an inspector repeating the message that it was beyond the agency's jurisdiction. Something in that organisation is seriously amiss.
Its attention to the building code is also suspect. The Herald arranged an independent inspection of the accident scene and was quickly told the ledge from which the schoolboy fell was lower than the minimum requirement of 1m above the floor. When informed about that, the OSH branch manager, Kevin Mottram, pointed out that it was the Auckland City Council's job to ensure compliance with the code. But he also conceded that it was the responsibility of his organisation to notice hazards and have them made safe.
He says they were concerned about the escalators area after an accident nearly occurred in August. But letters to the owner of the multiplex, Force Corporation, he says, brought no response. Nothing was done and on the Friday afternoon that school had broken up for these holiday, Danial Gardner fell to his death.
Force Corporation has declined to talk about the accident until the company has made its own investigation. It has simply told the Gardner family that the building complied with council regulations and there was nothing more it could do. The council also seems to be coy about explaining its attention to the safety of the cinema complex that was built right its nose, as a feature of the Edge development of Aotea Square.
At least the architect who designed the multiples, Ashley Allen, visited the site as soon as he heard of the accident, and expressed his concern to see young people sitting on a ledge above that from which Danial Gardner had fallen. The owner has now lightly fenced the fatal ledge with advertising and it can only be hoped it is looking closely at all other possible hazards in its building. It is a lively, interesting place for young people and would lose none of its appeal if well-designed barriers were erected wherever accidents could happen. It should not have taken a death to make the owners, designers, council and OSH inspectors see their responsibilities.
<i>Editorial:</i> This is no time to pass the buck
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.