New Zealand contractor blasts government’s knee-jerk reaction to Christchurch quake.
A Christchurch contractor has dubbed the process for demolishing earthquake-damaged buildings a “train wreck”.
Barry Foster, of Barry Foster Contracting, said his firm had arranged to “deconstruct” the old flour silo in Addington before Civil Defence national controller John Hamilton approved its demolition.
Hamilton has defended the demolition, saying Urban Search and Rescue engineers deemed the Lincoln Rd building a threat to nearby businesses and that it could not be stabilised within a reasonable time.
Foster said the firm had taken in its own engineers, who said that while the brick veneer of the building, already partly collapsed, was unsafe, the structure would be sound once the veneer was stripped away.
The firm had planned to save the estimated 450 cubic metres of imported Oregon timber from the building, as well as the machinery, which was about 150 years old, he said.
“Why are these people going in and wrecking everything? I just don’t understand,” he said. “Im not a greenie or anything like that. It’s terrible to see this s… going on. I’ve got a plan in place to save a lot of stuff.”
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