Quake apology on the cards for families bereaved by February 2011 tragedy
Tuesday, 4 February 2020
A civic apology will be made to families who lost loved ones in Christchurch's February 2011 earthquake as part of commemorations for the ninth anniversary of the disaster.
The Christchurch City Council was criticised during investigations following the earthquakes of 2010 and 2011, with then-mayor Sir Bob Parker apologising for the authority's role in signing off the faulty CTV building in which 115 people died – including many Japanese language students.
A delegation from Japan is coming to Christchurch for this year's February 22 anniversary and it is understood they and the other victims' families will be given a formal apology on behalf of the city.
The exact nature of the apology or what it will specifically be for is not year clear, and the council has been tight-lipped about any such event.
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Councillors have been asked not to speak about it following an agreement between the authority and Mayor Lianne Dalziel until Dalziel has 'engaged with all of the families', though it is unclear when that will happen.
'Any associated events surrounding the 22 February commemoration with bereaved families is private,' a council spokeswoman said.
The council is not paying for any families to attend commemorations as part of this year's anniversary.
The 2011 royal commission into the quakes heard the city council had been warned five years prior to the tragedy it was playing 'Russian roulette with its citizens' because of its policy on earthquake-prone buildings.
Architect Sir Miles Warren warned council in 2006 to examine more closely the dangers posed by unreinforced brick buildings in the central city.
In 2012 it emerged the council had been roundly criticised in an internal report over its handling of dangerous buildings in the September 2010 quake, with an over-reliance on an overworked and under-resourced team to evaluate dangerous buildings.
Later that year Parker apologised for 'shortcomings' that had led to the council approving construction of the CTV building after the royal commission ruled it should never have been granted a building permit.
Three council staff inspected the CTV building but none were engineers, and the final report by the commission ruled it should not have been given a resource consent when it was built in 1986.
It also emerged that Gerald Shirtcliff, who supervised the building's construction, had faked his engineering degree, while the building's designer and engineer David Harding had insufficient experience, was working 'beyond his competence', and did not have his work adequately supervised by boss Alan Reay.
Ann Brower, who was the sole survivor after a building on Colombo St collapsed on a bus and footpath, killing 13 people, said she was unaware of plans for an apology.
Brower, who successfully lobbied for changes to laws around safety measures for quake-prone buildings, said those injured and killed by collapsing masonry deserved to be recognised.
'The council has made apologies before, they have apologised to the CTV families and to their own staff for the undue stress put on them, but they have not apologised to the victims of brick buildings.
'To me, those were the people most worthy of an apology, because those mistakes were the most foreseeable.
'Not many people knew or would have predicted the CTV or Pyne Gould Corporation building (collapses), possibly nobody, but everybody with an ounce of knowledge about bricks knew that there would be widespread failures of brick buildings in an earthquake.'
Brower also said that of those caught up in the disaster, the injured had been forgotten.
'Lianne Dalziel did tell me years ago, before she was elected as mayor, that the council would apologise, but that hasn't happened yet.
'I think that people who were injured or killed by buildings that were regulated by the city council deserve an apology.
'It's not normal for a building to fall down in an earthquake in a first-world country. Mistakes can happen but you apologise for that.'
This year's 2011 quake anniversary will be marked with a public service at the Canterbury earthquake memorial site by Christchurch's Avon River on February 22.
The service, starting at 12.30pm, is expected to be a 'low-key' event lasting 45 minutes, with opportunities for people to lay flowers at the memorial wall.