Bay Harbour: October 18, 2017

PAGE 4 Wednesday October 18 2017
BAY HARBOUR
Latest Christchurch news at www.star.kiwi
News
Brower tells world her earthquake story
Inspiring people
to improve
safety standards
• By Gabrielle Stuart
EARTHQUAKE survivor Ann
Brower has told her story in
an international engineering
journal, hoping it will
inspire stricter safety
standards.
The Sumner resident
was the only person
who survived when a
Colombo St building
collapsed on a bus
during the February
22, 2011, earthquake,
killing 12 people.
The building which collapsed
had been damaged in the September
4, 2010, earthquake, but
it had not been reinforced or
fenced off.
Dr Brower has told her story
in a paper for the November
issue of the Earthquake Spectra
journal, which is published from
the Earthquake Engineering
Research Institute in California.
In the paper, she describes her
experience in the earthquakes,
her rescue and rehabilitation
Ann Brower
process. “At 12.51 on February
22, 2011, 12 people died beside
me. The parapet and facade of an
unreinforced masonry building
on the main street of Christchurch,
New Zealand, crushed the
bus that I was riding. I’m the
only one left, the lucky 13th. My
leg, my hand, and my soul will
never be the same,” she wrote in
the paper.
She also describes her
work campaigning for
building safety law changes
through the Royal Commission
of Inquiry, before
Parliament, and in countless
articles and interviews.
“In reading the evidence
about the building that collapsed
onto our bus, it was
hard to avoid the conclusion that
Parliament, the building owners,
and the city council had, each
in their own way, left us there to
die,” she wrote.
After years of campaigning, a
law change was made last year
requiring owners of buildings
with unsecured or unreinforced
masonry to strengthen them
within 7.5 years.
Dr Brower said she was
inspired to write about her
experience for the journal after
speaking to the NZ Society for
DESTROYED: The bus that Ann Brower was in was crushed by
masonry on Colombo St in the February 22, 2011, earthquake.
PHOTO: SIMON BAKER
Earthquake Engineering.
She said she wanted to inspire
scientists and engineers to fight
to make buildings safer and
earthquake standards stricter.
Many were doing great technical
work around earthquake
safety, but failing to communicate
that to the public and to
politicians, she said.
“It’s all well and good to make
spectacular science, but if you
can’t communicate it, what’s the
point,” she said.
“Science is only half the job.
It’s about taking that and using
it to make a change in our little
corner of the world, and communicating
it in a way that makes
Parliament sit up and listen,” she
said.
She said many scientists shied
away from engaging in politics,
but she believed it was essential.
“If the ultimate goal is a safer
society, there’s a lot of politics in
that,” she said.
“A lot of science and engineering
types wrinkle their noses at
politics and say ‘oh, it’s so odious’.
I say ‘yes, it’s all a game, and
everyone lies, and there’s a lot of
hypocrisy in it, that’s true. But
you still have to play the game’.”
Dr Brower said the journal’s
acceptance and revision process
took more than a year and it
would be a huge honour to
finally see it in print.
Telling her story and proving
that “the little guy can make a
change” had been very satisfying,
she said.
Although she still kept an eye
on earthquake strengthening
legislation, her main focus had
returned to the environmental
research she was focused on before
the earthquakes, she said.
Most of her current work was
around things like management
of freshwater and conservation
land in Canterbury, she said.
“If something has the potential
to make the world a better place,
I think it’s my job to share it,”
she said.
•Dr Brower’s story in her
own words can be found
online at www.star.kiwi
where the full pre-print
text of her paper has been
published. The final paper
is set to be published in
the November edition of
international earthquake
engineering journal,
Earthquake Spectra, which
will be available online at
www.earthquakespectra.org
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