Library off-limits for year at least
It will be at least a year before Wellington gets its central library back, possibly even longer.
The city’s main library shut indefinitely at 8.30pm on Tuesday after an engineers’ report raised concerns about safety in the event of a big earthquake.
Wellington City Council chief executive Kevin Lavery said interim measures were being worked on ‘‘at pace’’, including pop-up facilities.
‘‘We are not going to sit on our hands thinking about it.
‘‘We want to get something up and running quickly.
‘‘We might have a warehouse with the collection available on a click-and-collect basis, through the branch network or through these pop-ups.
‘‘Don’t be surprised if we have some containers in the Civic Square pretty damn soon.’’
The announcement to close the library was made suddenly on Tuesday afternoon, with staff and customers advised at the same time as the media.
The library’s entrance was cordoned off yesterday with some staff members stationed outside to inform would-be library users of the closure.
The dramatic development followed the delivery of a report from engineering firm Aurecon to WCC property manager Peter Brennan based on new seismic assessment guidelines for buildings with pre-set concrete flooring systems. Brennan sent an email to Lavery at 5.48pm on Monday recommending the library’s immediate closure based on the report’s findings, and Lavery agreed. Aurecon had found the pre-set concrete ‘‘hollow core’’ units used in the facility’s construction had resulted in ‘‘structural weaknesses’’ that could compromise the building in the event of a ‘‘significant’’ earthquake.
Lavery understood that would be a quake over magnitude six.
He said the council had acted as fast as was possible, and engaged Aurecon, with the findings received on Monday.
He said the guidelines were ‘‘like a telephone book’’ that required experienced engineers to apply. ‘‘We’re one of the first organisations in the country to do this. It’s complicated, it’s not straightforward.
‘‘When we looked at the report, it was too clear-cut [to ignore] and I don’t think we should put the public at risk, and our staff at risk.’’
More than 100 people worked at the library, but Lavery was confident those positions, and possibly more, would still exist in six months’ time.
Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment building performance and engineering manager Dave Robson said the section of the new guidelines was released in November last year to reflect lessons from the investigation into the partial collapse of Statistics House after the 2016 Kaiko¯ ura earthquake.
It had been developed by technical experts with MBIE and had required input from a wide range of experts in what was a worldleading approach to assessing buildings for seismic performance.