The earthquake-prone Haute Hospital building was evacuated from the board last year

Documents show that the main hospital building on the verge of closing in Lower Hut due to earthquake weakness was judged just one year ago as non-earthquake-prone.

Hiritunga block at Haute Hospital. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone

DHB used a 10-year-old seismic assessment to convince the Hutt City Council to go ahead with it in May 2021.

But a year later, this week, an updated assessment reflected the following: The multi-suite Heretaunga building is newly rated at just 15 percent of the New Building Standard (NBS) and its eviction may have to begin within weeks.

Even in 2011, Aurecon engineers were concerned about their weaknesses and identified DHB as a way to strengthen them.

While the building’s strength level is relatively low, it is not considered ‘earthquake-prone,’ said DSA (a tool for measuring the intrinsic strength of a building). The block is rated 43 percent by NBS.

Then Aurecon wrote in bold: “However, the nature of the failure mechanisms should be considered because we believe that they can lead to sudden loss of capacity and possible collapse of parts of the structure.”

Read the full report (PDF, 11MB)

DHB has known this since 2011. The DSA used this last year to argue to the board that the block is not prone to earthquakes.

The 2011 assessment on which it was based has not undergone a set of updates arising from the lessons learned in the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake.

The Heritunga complex survived the 7.8-magnitude earthquake, when a handful of other buildings in Wellington had yet to be demolished, and had to be demolished in the months and years that followed.

Hutt City Council came to look at the Heretaunga building in 2019, and the correspondence the council submitted to the RNZ.

It was required, under the earthquake-prone building rules approved in 2017, which set a deadline of early 2020.

“The 2020 deadline was for councils in high seismic risk areas (such as Haute City) to identify priority buildings (including hospitals) that the council deems to be earthquake prone,” MBIE said in a statement.

“Once the council requests an engineering assessment, the building owner has one year to issue it. The council will then consider this information and if it is accepted as earthquake-prone, it will place the building on the register as an earthquake-prone building, although there is no specific time frame for doing so. “.

Then that time begins with a seven-and-a-half-year deadline for repair or demolition.

The earthquake-prone building is less than 34 percent of the new building standard (Hritunga’s new interim rating of 15 percent—it’s still being evaluated by peer reviewers—puts it in an area where it is 25 times more likely to fail than it would at 100 percent NBS).

Photo: RNZ / Dom Thomas

One year period for evaluation

Records show that Hutt City wrote to the DHB in December 2019, saying the Heretaunga Block appeared to be earthquake-prone. It was definitely a “priority” building, halving the time to face any dangers.

The board gave DHB a year to make an assessment.

Had he done so, DHB would have known 18 months earlier that the Heretaunga block was prone to earthquakes.

DHB could have had a one-year extension in the assessment, if it had requested it by October 2020, but the board has not submitted a record requesting that either.

The health board did not meet the deadlines, and it was tightened under earthquake regulations that were changed to increase safety in response to the Kaikoura earthquake.

Instead, a year ago, six months after the December 2020 assessment deadline, DHB met with the board to discuss the seismic situation in Hiritunga. The council wanted to know how important it was – either the IL3 or IL4 building. The level of importance can revolve around whether a building is needed to provide surgical or emergency services – something which is not present in Heretaunga, so it is IL3.

The Board has not indicated that on the basis of it being IL4 it may be susceptible to earthquakes.

One week later, on May 13, the council wrote that it had received and approved Aurecon’s 2011 seismic assessment “and the use of this information determined that the building is not earthquake-prone.”

Read the council letter

The board told RNZ last night that it had “determined that the Heretaunga block was not earthquake-prone in May 2021 based on the information provided to it.” [by Hutt Valley DHB] According to the EPB methodology.

She said she obtained a new draft of the DSA on Tuesday of this week and was reviewing it in accordance with the Building Code, and she is expected to have more information on the peer-reviewed DSA next week.

Unwanted failure mechanism

RNZ asked DHB if any of the recommended boosters in 2011 had taken place between then and now.

This assessment came in 2011 10 months after the Christchurch earthquake that shattered many buildings, killing dozens of people.

In it, Oricon told DHB that “two important problems immediately arise” – that the Heretaunga Block’s structural system is “suddenly changing from a solid wall system to a supra-level flexible frame system”.

“This is likely to put a lot of pressure on the tire shafts.”

Second, the beams were much larger than the columns, so the columns were more likely to fall before the beams.

“This is a highly undesirable failure mechanism … that can lead to floor collapse,” the report said.

It is not known if this has been fixed.

Hutt is not alone in having earthquake-prone hospital buildings that still serve patients.

This is also the case in higher risk Hawke’s Bay and Canterbury, less risky Taranaki, as well as many other DHBs.

The approach to dealing with earthquake-prone buildings — to strengthen or replace, and in what time frame — varies widely.

Taranaki said he was well ahead of the 12-year timeframe to replace NBS’s 10 percent clinical suite, which has the lowest seismic rating of any public building providing major medical services to patients.

DHB said it is on track to open a six-story building by the end of 2025 to house several acute clinical services including: ED, ICU, maternity, primary, neonatology, radiology, laboratory and a rooftop helipad.

Hawke’s Bay is in the background, while Canterbury is further ahead, at least in the earthquake-prone Parkside complex, where work finally began this year to strengthen it by the end of the year.

In low-risk Auckland, the earthquake-prone Galbraith Building which houses many of Middlemore Hospital’s key services is not expected to be replaced until 2035-40.

Yesterday morning RNZ asked Health New Zealand how it would manage the major infrastructure problems facing hospitals, and whether it would set up an infrastructure task force, after it takes over from DHBs in July.

did not respond.

Health Secretary Andrew Little said he was not aware of any other buildings in the health sector in the same condition as Hut Hospital.

He told Little Morning Report he understands the widespread concern about the Heretaunga Block, however, the new designation does not mean the building will fall immediately.

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