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Post by ErrolC on Nov 24, 2016 21:15:21 GMT 12
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Post by Dave Homewood on Nov 24, 2016 21:38:39 GMT 12
All these years Wellington has been telling us how they have been preparing for "the big one". Well the big one was centered near Culverden, 229km away from downtown Wellington, and so far Wellington has had many modern buildings declared unsafe and likely to be demolished. The Defence Headquarters, the Tax office, the Stats building, a carpark building, and many others. The latest, a large mall about to collapse: www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/318875/evacuations-over-mall-collapse-riskI cannot help thinking had the 7.8 magnitude quake struck under Wellington itself, the entire city would have been destroyed. I am not making a joke, the city seems far less prepared that they have been leading the country to believe, It is time to move our National Archives, National Museum, National Library, Government and Defence Headquarters right away from the Wellington region in my opinion. If "the big one" they are always promising for Wellington hits, the place is toast.
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Post by ErrolC on Nov 24, 2016 21:58:13 GMT 12
All these years Wellington has been telling us how they have been preparing for "the big one". Well the big one was centered near Culverden, 229km away from downtown Wellington, and so far Wellington has had many modern buildings declared unsafe and likely to be demolished. The Defence Headquarters, the Tax office, the Stats building, a carpark building, and many others. The latest, a large mall about to collapse: www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/318875/evacuations-over-mall-collapse-riskI cannot help thinking had the 7.8 magnitude quake struck under Wellington itself, the entire city would have been destroyed. I am not making a joke, the city seems far less prepared that they have been leading the country to believe, It is time to move our National Archives, National Museum, National Library, Government and Defence Headquarters right away from the Wellington region in my opinion. If "the big one" they are always promising for Wellington hits, the place is toast. Which of those is expected to be demolished? I haven't seen that stated for Defence for instance, I might be out of date. The standards are designed to let people get out safely (Archives etc might be different).
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Post by Dave Homewood on Nov 24, 2016 22:43:05 GMT 12
The car park building, I heard the Stats building is likely, and now this mall is said to be about to collapse.
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Post by baronbeeza on Nov 24, 2016 22:46:40 GMT 12
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Post by ErrolC on Nov 25, 2016 5:46:48 GMT 12
Baron, 3 of that batch aren't 'modern' and were already going to be demolished.
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Post by baronbeeza on Nov 25, 2016 7:12:45 GMT 12
Exactly, I did read that also but then I am getting skeptical of what these guys peddle. I watched a Die Hard movie last night and I came to the realisation that some people must think that stuff is believable.
The news is certainly in the entertainment business.
Reader beware...
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Post by joey05 on Nov 25, 2016 9:53:03 GMT 12
I agree Wellington (and other councils) need to work much faster, credit to the Marlborough District Council who moved fast with building owners to get them up to speed. After the Seddon quakes 4 building in Blenheim were knocked over, not because of damage but due to them being too expensive to bring up to standard. During this 7.8 event we had one old shop front collapse in Picton and one building in downtown Blenheim that has the potential to collapse, but it was unoccupied the last nearly 2 years and work was well underway with strengthening. Only other building issue is the Noel Leeming store which has its fire sprinklers snap and flood the store causing total stock loss, but the building itself is sound!
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Nov 25, 2016 13:49:23 GMT 12
Sounds Air should be left to it. You can guarantee that if Air New Zealand come back to the route they discarded, they will end up undercutting Sounds Air. Air New Zealand showed how little they care about people who wish to fly between Marlborough and Christchurch when they pulled the plug. Sounds Air came to the rescue.
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Post by Mustang51 on Nov 25, 2016 14:38:09 GMT 12
Counsel? So the lawyers have been affected by the quake as well?
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Post by baronbeeza on Nov 25, 2016 14:43:17 GMT 12
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Post by skyhawkdon on Nov 25, 2016 16:23:21 GMT 12
I have just spent the last 2 days in civil defence workshops down south with a very big focus on earthquake preparedness and recovery. The scenarios we went through ARE bloody scary. This earthquake sequence is far from over according to the scientists. The bungled West Coast Civil Defence warning was made with very good intentions. Rather than shoot the messenger everyone should heed the message. 1 in 5 Wellington civil servants are now out of their offices and the list is growing by the day. Wellington and many other places around NZ are just not prepared enough for the big one that will come one day (and it may be sooner than any of us want to think about).
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Post by Dave Homewood on Nov 25, 2016 17:41:16 GMT 12
1 in 5 Wellington civil servants are now out of their offices and the list is growing by the day. Bellamy's must be doing a roaring trade!
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Post by thelensofhistory on Nov 25, 2016 18:30:45 GMT 12
I have just spent the last 2 days in civil defence workshops down south with a very big focus on earthquake preparedness and recovery. The scenarios we went through ARE bloody scary. This earthquake sequence is far from over according to the scientists. The bungled West Coast Civil Defence warning was made with very good intentions. Rather than shoot the messenger everyone should heed the message. 1 in 5 Wellington civil servants are now out of their offices and the list is growing by the day. Wellington and many other places around NZ are just not prepared enough for the big one that will come one day (and it may be sooner than any of us want to think about). In my experience a lot depends on the part of the country you live in. Southland CDEM seems to exist at the bureaucratic level more than anything else. On the other hand the experiences with the quakes in North Canterbury has seen a active community in Waimakariri CDEM.
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Post by camtech on Nov 25, 2016 18:53:28 GMT 12
As a retired CDEM Officer, I believe the issues with the organisation are that there is a lack of commitment from the political arena to adequately resource the organisation at all levels. The links between each level are frequently ambiguous, poorly planned and often heavily reliant on goodwill of the volunteers who are the coalface. More full time staff at all levels, clear statements of responsibility and a willingness to work together would go a long way to make a complicated system work in times of high stress.
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Post by thelensofhistory on Nov 25, 2016 19:37:01 GMT 12
As a retired CDEM Officer, I believe the issues with the organisation are that there is a lack of commitment from the political arena to adequately resource the organisation at all levels. The links between each level are frequently ambiguous, poorly planned and often heavily reliant on goodwill of the volunteers who are the coalface. More full time staff at all levels, clear statements of responsibility and a willingness to work together would go a long way to make a complicated system work in times of high stress. First of you would have to convince people at the volunteer level in a place like Invercargill that Civil Defence is more than something that appears in the news and on their rates bills. Southland CDEM has a volunteer coordinator. Yet I haven't heard a peep from Southland CDEM in over 2 years. My aim isn't to grumble. I think without a major event like the Canterbury Earthquakes there simply isn't any interest in the Civil Defence sector.
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Post by Freighter5910 on Nov 25, 2016 20:03:19 GMT 12
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Nov 25, 2016 20:23:20 GMT 12
Even if we moved everything to Hamilton, rest assured that if Wellington was hit by "the big one", buildings in Hamilton would be crumbling too. Too bloody right....you only have to look at the old newspaper reports of damage hundreds of miles away from Hawke's Bay after the February 1931 earthquake. And as a matter of interest, there was a lot of damage to buildings in Wellington from the two 1942 Wairarapa earthquakes, which leveled a large part of the downtown area of Masterton and toppled virtually every chimney in the district, but it isn't commonly known about in our history, because there was nil death toll due to the fact both of those earthquakes occured late at night and it was during the war years when most people went to bed early, and also because the wartime censors restricted news reports about the earthquakes to prevent Japanese propagandists getting hold of it. I've seen photographs of rubble all over Manners Street in Wellington from those two Wairarapa earthquakes, plus the Wairarapa Archive published a comprehensive history about the earthquakes several years ago (including photos of damage in Wellington) and the book is still available directly from the Archive as well as from local bookshops.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Nov 25, 2016 21:22:03 GMT 12
The National Archives documents should at least be all moved online, digital, so we can search them and read them easily.
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Post by ErrolC on Nov 25, 2016 21:43:42 GMT 12
It's worth clicking through to Twitter to read the whole string of tweets.
@robsuisted: ...and here's the Papatea fault breaking SH1. Road has jumped 4metres! The power is hard to comprehend... pic.twitter.com/DXvh5OrtwB
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