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Wednesday, February 6, 2013

TV1 Breakfast Show this morning - on to talk about earthquake issues

I'm looking forward to being on TV1's Breakfast Show this morning at 7:20am today to talk about the Government's proposals to on earthquake strengthening the city's building stock.

There are some interesting ideas here but they will be contentious and are potentially unworkable. Requiring all commercial buildings to be strengthened within 5 years just won't work as will the proposal to ensure that all buildings are strengthened within 10 years. The costs are high and some of the benefits in some parts of the country (not earthquake prone areas obviously!) are questionable.

1 comment:

  1. It is utterly delusional for an elected councilor to suggest to the people who elected her that the money shouldnt be spent because it would save too few of them.
    How many lives have to be saved before you will approve of the expenditure? How much money spent per life saved do you propose? What value do you put on the life of one of your voters?

    Upon what field of science are you basing your estimates of the number of lives at risk? I would suggest you use the total occupancy in normal business hours as the number of people who could potentially die.

    You need to be reminded that the relatively small death toll from the Feb 22 Christchurch earthquake was due to 1) the event occurring close to lunch hour, 2) the fact that most of the earthquake prone buildings in the city were unoccupied at the time due to the damage caused by the earlier sep 4 event and 3)the sep 4 event occurred outside office hours.
    If the Feb 22 event had occurred in office hours with those buildings occupied, the death toll could well have been in the thousands.
    Not all earthquakes occur outside office hours. Not all earthquakes wait until the unsafe buildings are unoccupied.

    Perhaps you would like to extend your delusion to the expenditure on cancer research or anti-tobacco campaigns or influenza vaccine runs or safe sex education because the number of lives saved is not enough to warrant the billions we spend every year on them & the hospitals, labs, clinics & marketing space required to make them happen.

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