Property owners lose right to appeal against urgent post-quake demolition.
The owners of more than 100 earthquake-hit Christchurch buildings facing urgent demolition will have no right to appeal and cannot use their own contractors.
The central Christchurch red zone is in lockdown after Monday’s quakes, and we understand that only a few approved engineers and demolition companies are allowed to enter.
City Owners Rebuild Entity founder Ernest Duval said that in a meeting with the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (Cera) on Wednesday owners were told buildings classed as “urgent” would be demolished by Cera’s contractor at the owners’ expense.
Cera said it would try to notify owners before their buildings were demolished, but there would be no right to appeal or opportunity to have their own engineering assessments, he said.
Duval said his company, Equity Trust Pacific Group, had 15 buildings in the red zone, including two that must be demolished. Two could now be on the “urgent list”, but without access it was hard to know.
“There’s probably going to be a few innocent victims [buildings], but it is very hard to know,” he said.
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Such is the weakened nature of some of the buildings, engineers have taken to using remote controlled miniature helicopter drones equipped with cameras to carry out internal inspections (see video below):
