TV centre was ‘badly built’

A six-storey office building that collapsed and killed 115 people in New Zealand’s devastating earthquake last year was poorly designed, inadequately constructed and should never have been issued with a building permit, a government report said.

The Canterbury Television (CTV) building crumbled to the ground during the 6.1-magnitude earthquake that rocked Christchurch on Feb 22, 2011. The building’s collapse was responsible for nearly two-thirds of the 185 deaths from the quake.

The report was the final release from the government-ordered commission that spent months investigating the buildings damaged in the quake. Findings released concluded that the CTV building was made of weak columns and concrete and did not meet standards when it was built in 1986.

The report found several deficiencies in the CTV building’s design and said the city council should never have issued the building a permit because the design did not comply with the standards at the time.