The CTV Building was the headquarters of Canterbury Television (locally known as CTV) and other companies. Located on the corner of Cashel and Madras Streets in Christchurch Central City, New Zealand. It became one of the symbols of the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake after 115 people lost their lives when the building collapsed during the disaster; the deaths made up about 60% of the earthquake's total fatalities.
History
The CTV Building was designed and constructed in about 1986. Christchurch City Council gave building consent in September 1986. Building codes for earthquake design changed frequently in New Zealand following the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake (in 1935, 1965, 1976, 1984 and 1992). A significant change in design philosophy was the change from non-ductile design of a reinforced concrete structure to a ductile approach, where it is expected that building joints yield in design earthquake events, which might make a structure uninhabitable but without it collapsing. A new reinforced concrete standard emphasising ductility came into effect in New Zealand in 1982. Stefano Pampanin, an associate professor at the University of Canterbury who teaches in structural and seismic design, described the non-ductile philosophy as "an obsolete design based on the levels of knowledge and code provisions that existed before the mid-1980s". The structural design engineer was Alan Reay Consultants (named after the company's owner) and the architect was Alun Wilke Associates Architects, both of which are firms based in Christchurch.
The CTV Building was inspected by engineers after the 4 September 2010 Canterbury earthquake and after the 26 December 2010 4.9 magnitude aftershock. On both occasions, the building was declared safe, having suffered only superficial damage. The building collapsed in the 22 February 2011 earthquake and, due to its high death toll of over 100 people, has become one of the symbols of the earthquake.
The building was owned since 1991 by Madras Equities, a company owned by shareholders Russell Warren Ibbotson and Lionel Walter Hunter. Hunter lost a friend in the building and told a reporter if he had known that there was anything wrong with the building, "I would have pushed it over myself."
Tenants
The building's main tenant was Canterbury Television and the company held the naming rights. CTV occupied the ground and first floors, Levels 1 & 2. The second floor, Level 3, was not tenanted during the quake. King's Education, an English-as-a-second-language school occupied the third floor, Level 4. The Clinic, a medical clinic, was on the fourth floor, Level 5; and the not-for-profit relationship counselling agency Relationship Services was on the fifth floor, Level 6. A nursing school was also located in the building.
2011 Christchurch earthquake
The building collapsed in the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake, with only the north shear wall that included the lift shaft left still standing. One survivor was quoted as running out of the ground floor during the shaking. When she had reached the other side of the road, she looked back and "the building was down." Within minutes, a fire broke out. Most of the deaths were caused by the collapse, but it is assumed that some of the victims suffered fatal burns, and some may have even drowned during the efforts of putting the fire out.
King's Education was an ESL school that was located on Level 4 of the CTV building. There were an estimated 87 regular students and 27 visiting students in the building at the time of the earthquake, as well as 17 staff members. Some people had already left the building for lunch when the earthquake struck. The loss of hard copy and server records in the earthquake complicated the school's attempts to contact students and next-of-kin; as a last resort, the school decided to post best-known student and staff status and location on the Internet in spite of privacy issues, in an effort to update friends and relatives and to find students who were not accounted for but who were not in the building at the time of its collapse. The disaster received particularly wide coverage in Japan due to 27 of the victims being Japanese.
The building collapse killed 115 persons, consisting of 16 Canterbury Television employees on Levels 1 & 2; 79 King's Education staff (4), teachers (5) and foreign students (70) on Level 4; 19 medical centre staff (13), patients (5) and one patient's friend on Level 5; and an Administrator for Relationship Services on Level 6. The bodies of four victims in the CTV building could not be identified because the high temperature of the building fire had destroyed any traces of DNA.