Raising the standard for resilient cities
Meeting the building code may ensure people can exit a building during a crisis, but it’s no guarantee they’ll be able to enter again, says the former Mayor of Christchurch, Sir Bob Parker.
Parker (pictured), who will be keynote speaker at The Property Congress to be held on the Gold Coast in October, was widely praised for his handling of the February 2011 earthquake that tragically took the lives of 185 New Zealanders and injured thousands more.
Building failures were found to be responsible for 175 of the deaths from the 6.1-magnitude quake. The collapse of the Canterbury Television building accounted for nearly two-thirds of the fatalities.
“It’s true that earthquakes don’t kill people – buildings do,” Parker says. “And damage to buildings means damage to people.”
In the aftermath of the quake – which Parker says was the equivalent of 80,000 Hiroshima bombs exploding – almost the entire CBD of Christchurch was too dangerous to enter. Cars were marooned in car parks, 1300 offices lay empty and every business function ground to a halt.
“What happened in Christchurch serves as a lesson for businesses and building owners everywhere. While our building codes ensured that people could exit the building – they were no guarantee that people could enter again,” Parker says.
Many buildings survived, but their foundations were so badly shaken that they were no longer safe to inhabit.
“There was no power, no transport, and shortages of fuel and cash. All these things made operating a business incredibly difficult.
“If you can’t get people back in the door of your business within a week, how will you operate? Without business there’s no economy, and within a very short space of time, people leave and then you don’t have a community or a city.”
Parker says the earthquake rewrote the rule books on resilience.
“In 25 seconds, life became very different, but we picked our way back to a new kind of normal, and are now determined to build the safest city in the world.”
While the total cost to insurers of rebuilding has ballooned to more than $40 billion, Parker says “we can’t put all our faith in insurance”.
Instead, Parker says the development industry must “rethink its approach to minimum standards – because we know that there are times when even meeting the maximum isn’t enough. We need to plan to exceed the maximum if we are to build resilient cities.
“Everybody in Christchurch is conscious about the safety and structure of the buildings they enter – and it has become a commercial proposition to build better”.
New Zealand has also embarked on a program to upgrade lifeline projects, such as bridges, roads and water pipes. “We’re asking ‘what are the weakest points? Have standards improved since this was built?’ We are prepared to over-engineer them if they are critical pieces of infrastructure. And if we don’t have the cash, we find it, because we know from experience that the cost of losing that critical infrastructure is immense.”
Learn Sir Bob Parker’s lessons on leadership and resilience. Register for The Property Congress today at http://www.thepropertycongress.com.au/.