Interesting for those who were around when the RoF was built to know: how bad is the damage? I.e. was the stadium well designed for earthquakes?
Structurally, it's fine. There is basically cosmetic damage (broken pipes, small bits of liquefaction, etc.) that needs to be repaired. This just takes time (about two weeks they say).
The stadium is well designed for earthquakes. With modern engineering, there are two standards: a functionality standard (so after a 'small' earthquake, it's relatively simple to repair -- this earthquake fits into this category) and a 'don't kill people' standard, with no regard for functionality afterwards. Older buildings typically only have one point of failure, and that point is catastrophic. A good example is the two houses in the south island - the homestead that collapsed was built using old techniques, so when it failed, it failed with fatal consequences. Compare this to that house that was shunted 10m because it was on the faultline. It's a write-off, but the person inside survived, and it's still standing (it's actually more complicated than this, but it's the basic idea).
Obviously not designed and built by those who built the center port buildings .Sounds like its bloody lucky they struck at the time they did or things could have very different.Going to need to be some serious questions asked due to how new those buildings are and that its the 2nd time know that they have had issues after a major jolt.
Westpac Stadium seems well-designed and lets hope it really is up to the stresses that are going to be placed by a really major quake in the future.
My feeling is that we can learn a lot from other countries that are earthquake-prone (California, Japan, Chile etc.) but we haven't been doing this much. For example Chile is well ahead of us in terms of sports stadium design for earthquake preparedness. A much bigger quake of 8.3 hit Chile on September 16 2015 and yet the FIFA u-17 World Cup went ahead from October 17 at venues close to the epicentre such as Coquimbo and Vina del Mar which had also been hit by major tsunamis.
A certain amount of skepticism about the earthquake safety of modern NZ buildings is healthy - without living in fear (most modern public buildings and commercial premises stood up very well in the Canterbury quakes i.e. they didn't collapse and the people inside escaped even if the buildings were often not repairable). The collapse of the CTV and Pyne Gould Guinness buildings in Christchurch, which were declared safe after construction and after the September 2010 quake and numerous aftershocks, raises many questions about the building standards even of structures built from the 1980's on and reliability of engineering assessments in this country.
The problem is that there are a number of public buildings and commercial premises in Wellington, including many built since the 1960's, that are known to be dangerous or else have not yet been discovered to be dangerous. There are hundreds of buildings on the Wellington City Council's list of "Earthquake Prone Buildings" here - and this is only in the central city, not the suburbs (and little is being done to remedy the situation it seems):
http://wellington.govt.nz/~/media/services/rates-a...
Major structural failures as have occurred this week to the Statistics NZ Building ( eleven years old) and 61 Molesworth St should not be happening after what was in fact only a mild quake. What will happen when eventually there is a really large quake centred close to or under Wellington city?
Evidently basic stuff like demolishing unreinforced brick chimneys has not been carried out in Wellington - a basic lesson to learn from the Canterbury quakes. Pretty much all unreinforced brick chimneys will collapse in a major quake either inwards or outwards. Put pressure on your council to remove all unreinforced brick chimneys city-wide and replace yours if you own a house that has one.
