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The collapsed Canterbury Television building in Christchurch's CBD - Source: Supplied -
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Questions over the structural integrity of the CTV building were being asked long before it collapsed in a smouldering pile following the February earthquake.
The CTV building claimed 115 lives when it crumbled in a pile of smoking rubble on February 22. A total of 181 people died across the city in the quake.
TV ONE 's Sunday has discovered that the Christchurch City Council (CCC) questioned aspects of the CTV building design during the construction process 25 years ago.
Sunday took the 1986 plans to an engineering expert, who also pointed to design and construction flaws as the reason for the building's catastrophic fall.
Professor Jose Restrepo told TV ONE's Sunday programme that the problems with the building go right back to construction.
Restrepo is critical of the building's original design and believes faults in the construction of the six storey high tower are to blame.
"The key is to look at the drawings of the building, we did find some critical areas," he said.
He said the first critical factor is the way the floors are tied to the lift shaft using, in places, wielded steel mesh.
"Those connections are rather precarious and in a way there were many buildings in this era that have this kind of connections as well," he said.
He says the light and brittle steel would have just fractured in the shake.
"It just takes a little pull and it snaps," he said.
Restrepo, a former professor of engineering at the University of Canterbury, who now runs an earthquake engineering research lab in San Diego, says the mesh would have ripped off the lift shaft, which was one of the building's main foundations and the building would have just crumbled.
But he said the mesh would not have breached building codes in the 1980's.
But the CCC appeared to have concerns anyway, they wrote to the design engineer asking for more information about how the floors would be tied to the lift shaft.
Restrepo says it is understood that the council had no official response to those questions.
"The only way I can think is that perhaps they, on a phone conversation, they explained, but there is nothing in writing," he said.
Part of Professor Restrepo's work is to discover what happens to buildings in earthquakes.
He does this by shaking the living daylights out of full-sized buildings with massive hydraulic rams.
Right now his team are constructing a five storey building just so they can shake it to pieces and set it on fire.
It was this method that discovered in the early 1990's that wielded steel mesh can be brittle and snap.
Professor Restrepo believes that there was also a problem with the columns.
"The columns would have exploded in compression, rendering the building useless, pancaking the building.
"I can see from the photos, the building has not spilled to a parking lot or to the street. It has basically imploded," he said
In Restrepo's opinion there simply wasn't enough steel holding the columns together.
Sunday asked the structural engineers who designed the CTV building if they agreed with Restrepo's hypothesis.
Alan Reay Consultants principal Doctor Alan Reay said he was not prepared to talk on camera at this stage.
Professor Restrepo did reiterate that he believes the CTV building did meet the building code of its day although said he did not think it would meet today's standards.
Family fights on
Viv Bishop, who lost 32-year-old daughter Nina in the quake, agrees with Restrepo, saying that all was not well structurally. Nina was working as a relationship services administrator on the fifth floor of the CTV building when the quake struck.
"Something in the structure was not sound anymore, for it to come down like that," she said.
Bishop says she still can't understand how the building fell so easily.
She said Nina too had concerns about the building after the Boxing Day quake.
"She didn't feel that safe in there really, she'd go to work and she'd talk about the shaking and the shuddering of the building."
Her employer contacted the building manager after December 26 saying they were deeply distressed about new cracking.
They say the manager assured them the building was safe claiming he had already had an engineer inspect the building after both the September 4 and Boxing Day quakes.
The CTV building manager has since denied making such a claim to Relationship Services.
Brian Kennedy lost his wife Faye in the same building and describes the site as a "hell hole".
Kennedy said he and other family members waited in the nearby park for news of The Centre practice manager but were realistic seeing what a mess the building was.
"We were realists, like you had to look at the crumbling mess and say, good God, if she made it through that, we were very, very lucky," he told Sunday.
Kennedy is part of the Quake Families group who are searching for answers about the collapse.
"It's rather weird isn't it, that The Clinic people, CTV people and others, have mentioned that when vehicles went past, it shook".
They met with Attorney-General Chris Finlayson today to push for legal aid so they can defend themselves at the Royal Commission into the quake.
Commission has final say
A three man Royal Commission of Inquiry will ultimately determine if there were design faults with the CTV building.
Commission Chairman Justice Mark Cooper says is the Inquiry finds the building was badly designed the next obvious step would be to follow up with the designer.
The commission was due to receive a technical report on the CTV building last month, but it has now been delayed indefinitely.
For advice on how to deal with the emotional impact of the earthquakes visit the Relationship Services Whakawhanaungatanga website or call 0800 735 283 for free telephone or face to face support.
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