Forget the carrot, it’s stick time

Alittle more than a month ago, many thousands of people enjoyed Wellington’s Cuba Dupa and Newtown festivals. It was shoulder to shoulder as they jiggled to the live bands, crammed the food stalls and knocked back the craft beer.

However, many will have been blissfully unaware of the very real risk they were taking as they jostled their way past the buildings that represent both the life and character of these precincts but also a potential danger for those attracted to them.

During the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake, 40 people were killed and more than 100 injured by debris that fell from buildings with unreinforced masonry.

More than seven years on that city is steadily rebuilding and the country faces an unprecedented wave of earthquake strengthening work.

Despite that many thousands remain at risk every day in the country’s capital, and also beyond in other regional centres.

The Dominion Post has revealed that the owners of 25 buildings in Wellington have not even started the physical work needed to strengthen their dangerous properties, to make them safe for the thousands using busy thoroughfares.

That figure is no doubt much bigger around the rest of the country, particularly in smaller towns where the cost of strengthening requirements threatens the very existence of main street and they perhaps feel sufficiently far away from the epicentre of legislative and literal threat to enjoy blissful ignorance.

But Hutt City Council has created its own tremor of sorts, one that will hopefully shake other regional authorities and, more particularly, its close neighbour, from their slumber. It has announced the first prosecution against a building owner for failing to finish earthquake-strengthening work. Alura Ltd, which owns the Petone block of flats in question, faces a maximum fine of $200,000 if found guilty.

Lower Hutt’s action is to be applauded, in part because it runs counter to the lack of it in the capital, where the danger is even more obvious.

In Wellington, it has been delay, delay, delay. Building owners have been pushed and prodded, extensions have been issued, excuses have been exchanged, subsidies offering tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars offered.

Most business owners have responded and either fixed their buildings or made good progress towards that goal. Well done to them.

But 25 buildings are still deemed dangerous and allegedly insufficient work has been done to rectify that.

We concede there may be legitimate reasons for the owners’ tardiness. In some cases the ownership structure is complicated and landlords are based overseas. Ultimately, however, these are excuses and they are running out of time. This extension runs out in five months.

We hope that if they are unable to meet their requirements and make their buildings safe that the Wellington City Council, backed by central government, will do it for them and follow Lower Hutt’s lead.

Lest these buildings become 25 monuments to bureaucratic folly in the face of fatal threat.

Lower Hutt’s action is to be applauded.