Ele Ludemann: Common sense on earthquake risk

The government is applying common sense to building regulations on earthquake risk:

The earthquake-prone building system will be refocused to reduce repair costs and reinvigorate communities, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says.

“While well intentioned, the current system for assessing and managing seismic risk in buildings places an overwhelming financial burden on building owners.

Brian Easton: Do We Take Regulatory Impact Statements Seriously?

The Sorry Story of Earthquake-Prone Buildings.

The Treasury requires that when new or amended legislation is proposed, a Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) be provided – ‘a high-level summary of the problem being addressed, the options and their associated costs and benefits, the consultation undertaken, and the proposed arrangements for implementation and review’.

Frank Newman: Earthquake rules threaten properties

Strengthen or demolish? That's the question many property owners will be forced to answer if a bill before Parliament passes into law.

Reviews by the Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment have triggered aftershocks that are now being felt throughout New Zealand.  Those reviews raised concerns about the lack of information identifying unsafe buildings and urged the Government to make sure that all buildings had at least one third of the strength of new buildings.

Mike Butler: Quake hysteria hits Opera House

How could the Hawke's Bay Opera House suddenly switch from being the jewel in the Hastings District Council’s crown to a dangerous no-go zone surrounded by safety barriers?

Building owners throughout New Zealand are being penalised by faulty advice from earthquake engineers. Banks have climbed on the bandwagon by insisting on earthquake risk reports on buildings that have no structural issues whatsoever as a condition of mortgage finance, creating a new industry for engineers to print out largely pre-written reports for $600 to $1000.

The 99-year-old Hastings council-owned Opera House was suddenly closed on March 4 of this year after advice from engineers that parts of the building were less than 34 percent of the new building standard of earthquake resistance.

Mike Butler: Bureaucrats bungle earthquake policy

A toxic mix of greed, fear, liability protection, zealotry, secrecy, technical errors, and complexity has led to an earthquake prone building policy that will cost $10-billion to save seven lives over 75 years, according to a report released this week.

Economist Ian Harrison, who wrote “Error-Prone Bureaucracy”, has a Master of Public Policy from Johns Hopkins University and has become an expert on policy formulated without regard to evidence, logic, or common sense.

Draft legislation was introduced into Parliament last December to amend the way the Building Act deals with seismic risk to buildings. The key element in the legislation is the “earthquake prone” building definition which intends to apply the existing calibration of 34 percent of the new building standard.

Harrison points out that the policy would cost building owners over $10-billion, would disadvantage tens of thousands of people, it would have a potentially devastating impact on heritage buildings, while the benefits will be less than $100-million, and could be expected to save just seven lives over the next 75 years.

By contrast, Harrison writes, if $10-billion were spent improving road safety and health, thousands of lives could be saved.