Yesterday we covered United Future’s release of the list of Wellington’s 808 potentially earthquake prone buildings.

Mr Dunne said

“I do not think people will behave in a knee-jerk way with this information, but they do have a right to know and make informed decisions about whether they wish to be in buildings that are not likely to perform well in an earthquake. “That is not scare-mongering. It is giving people knowledge.”

Mr Dunne said people had demonstrated a very sensible approach to the earthquake generally and he had no doubt this would continue.”

Note:where a building listed has the term ‘124 Served’, this means earthquake-prone building notices issued under Section 66 of the Building Act 1991 have been reissued a notice under Section 124 of the Building Act 2004 requiring strengthening.

A person named “Denis” left a message on the blog saying that some commercial buildings had already received Section 124 notices

“like Whitcoulls’ premises on Lambton Quay which shocked a lot of people when they saw the notice by the door.”

And that set us thinking  What does an earthquake prone building look like and what sort of buildings need strengthening?

We decided to take Whitcoulls and 4 other randomly chosen addresses out of the 172 premises that were issued  ‘124 notices‘ on the list.

Then we looked at them on Google Street view, please bear in mind that (other than Whitcoulls) we cannot tie in a street address to a specific building name because the list only gives a premises’ street number, this is just what Google Street View shows for these addresses.

To the untrained eye, and without knowing that notices have been issued on buildings like these, its hard to pick buildings that have been judged to need strengthening against earthquake damage. Not all of them are heritage buildings either.

312-316 Lambton Quay (Whitcoulls) a WCC Heritage Building

25 Bowen Street, a WCC Heritage Building

12 College Street, Te Aro

24 Abel Smith Street, Te Aro

39 Dixon Street, Te Aro

The owners of the 172 premises are obviously faced with an enormous and costly exercise getting these buildings up to the required standard.

We think that government assistance should be given – either in the form of grants or low interest loans – to ensure the necessary work is carried out as soon as possible in these financially difficult times.