Seismic risk series

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Drone footage of the exterior of the Waiapu Cathedral in Napier.
Di Woods is not yet on screen but starts speaking.
Drone footage alternates between the exterior and the interior of the cathedral.

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The Cathedral is a church, ultimately, so it continues to be a place that is visited for many different reasons, but it remains a place that is an anchor point for Napier city. The most important thing for us as a church is clearly the people and the safety of the people. 

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Di Woods is seated inside the cathedral.

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My name is Di Woods. I am the Dean of Waiapu Cathedral, which is located in Napier in Hawke's Bay. 

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Footage of Napier beach.
Di Woods is seated inside the cathedral.

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The history of the cathedral goes back some 100 years or so. The building that stands at the moment is the third building to be on the site. The original one was made of brick, and in the 1931 Napier earthquake that was destroyed.  

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Drone footage alternates between the exterior and interior of the cathedral.

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Between 1960 and 1967 the building that stands today was constructed including a Māori chapel, which we call the Aotearoa chapel these days. 

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Footage alternates between Di Woods seated inside the cathedral and drone shots of the exterior of the cathedral.

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There was a detailed seismic assessment known as a DSA back in 2012 and so we've known since 2012 that there were problems, the degree and the percentage of those problems changed significantly. 

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Drone footage alternates between the exterior and interior of the cathedral.

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Whenever owners or occupiers of a building receive a seismic assessment with a low rating, that gives rise to a range of uncertainties about the next steps, including the question of whether they should continue to occupy the building. The reality is that percent NBS ratings are a very broad engineering metric only and in no way represent an accurate measure of the risk of the building. 

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Dave Brunsdon is seated inside the cathedral.
Drone footage alternates between the Dave and interior and exterior of the cathedral, including a close up of the Earthquake-prone Building notice.

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I'm Dave Brunsdon, an earthquake engineer engaged by the diocese to undertake a seismic risk evaluation following their receipt of a detailed seismic assessment with a rating of less than 34% of new building standard. The seismic rating of the cathedral is 20% of new building standard, or NBS. I followed a series of steps that are actually broadly outlined in MBIE’s seismic risk guidance. Firstly, reviewing the seismic assessment, just so that I can understand the various vulnerabilities they have identified and having a discussion with the engineers who put together the seismic assessment. Secondly, inspecting the building so that I could see some of those features for myself. Thirdly, identifying the various risk parameters that inform the evaluation and then exploring the consequences if a decision was made to close the cathedral, then preparing the draft report, and the final most important step was discussing the report with the diocese. 

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Drone footage of a small country town, with a copy of the Seismic Risk Guidance for Buildings overlaid over the drone footage.
Dave Brunsdon is seated inside the cathedral, alternating with drone footage of the exterior of the cathedral.

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MBIE’s seismic risk guidance summarises the headline messages associated with earthquake prone buildings and provides a framework for evaluating the associated risk elements. This includes the consequences of closure as well as the seismic risk itself. The key messages are very helpful in explaining what percent NBS ratings do and don't mean. The diagrams are also very useful for explaining to people what the whole context of risk. The most important part of the process is explaining the dimensions of seismic risk to the people that are directly affected. In this case it was the diocese seismic strengthening committee. These discussions are always best held face to face. It's very useful to have the MBIE seismic risk guidance at hand to be able to explain key parts of the process. 

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Di Woods is seated inside the cathedral, alternating with interior and exterior footage of the cathedral.

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The MBIE guidance has been really helpful. I think the fear we had was, along with many other people, that a 20% rating would mean the building needed to be closed for the safety of people. The MBIE guidelines were applied not by us, but by an engineer, not because they were unintelligible to us, but we wanted to be sure that we were getting it right.

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Drone shot of the exterior of the cathedral, with Building Performance logo and link to the Seismic risk guidance.