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Speaker 1: Nine two nine two is the text number. Standard text

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Speaker 1: fees apply on that. Now one of Wellington's prominent girls

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Speaker 1: schools has been forced to close a block because it's

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Speaker 1: earthquake prone. Apparently a building report found that thirteen classrooms

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Speaker 1: at Wellington Girls College, which hows about three hundred and

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Speaker 1: eighty students, met only fifteen percent of building standards. The

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Speaker 1: trouble is the Ministry of Education apparently knew about this

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Speaker 1: all the way back in twenty twenty, but never told

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Speaker 1: the school. Julia Davidson is the principal of Wellington Girls,

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Speaker 1: is with us now. Hey Julia, sure, how are you well?

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Speaker 1: Thank you? When did you find out?

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Speaker 2: I found out in April April this year?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, how did you find out?

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Speaker 2: We were sent a document, a ministry document that was

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Speaker 2: basically given some data around the reasons why we should

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Speaker 2: get a new school built. So it was just the

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Speaker 2: little graphics documents that showed where our deficiencies were, and

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Speaker 2: then it looked at each of the blocks and looked

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Speaker 2: at the five minutes petitions related to them, and we

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Speaker 2: suddenly saw that it was likely to be under thirty

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Speaker 2: four percent, which is the magic number for the earthquake

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Speaker 2: prone and it was like, oh, cracky, what have we

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Speaker 2: got here? So that's when we started asking some questions.

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Speaker 1: And what did they say to you when you ask questions?

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Speaker 2: They we asked them if they would get a report

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Speaker 2: done so that we could confirm actually what the number was.

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Speaker 2: And it took a little while for that to happen,

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Speaker 2: and in the end, they didn't do the detailed seismic

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Speaker 2: assessment that the board asked of them. They did a

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Speaker 2: lesser version. So the board commissioned its own detailed sizemic

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Speaker 2: assessment and we got both those reports a bass a

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Speaker 2: week ago.

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Speaker 1: Now they say they actually did tell you guys beforehand,

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Speaker 1: but maybe they just didn't tell you. Does that pass

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Speaker 1: well sniff test?

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Speaker 2: I don't. We have no record of being told that.

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Speaker 2: They certainly did talk to us about issues in that

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Speaker 2: block that we're going to need to be addressed in

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Speaker 2: the next twenty years, and we think that we got

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Speaker 2: told that in about twenty fourteen, So it was like, yeah,

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Speaker 2: you know, you've got some stuff that you've got to do.

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Speaker 2: It'll be the next twenty years. But by then, actually

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Speaker 2: the block will be demolished anyway, because it was going

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Speaker 2: to go to make way for the new school. Okay,

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Speaker 2: so I expect that was that sort of general level conversation,

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Speaker 2: So it wasn't a.

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Speaker 1: The Ministry of Education's head of Property Sam Fowler says

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Speaker 1: it has been working with the school on seismic problems

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Speaker 1: since twenty nineteen, which included advice about the Brook block

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Speaker 1: being earthquake prone. My understanding, he says, is that conversations

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Speaker 1: we had with the school over that period not just

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Speaker 1: about Brook but about others too.

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Speaker 2: Definitely, there were definitely conversations to do with earthquakes, earthquake

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Speaker 2: primee blocks. So our Tar block in twenty nineteen we

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Speaker 2: were told was it fifteen percent of new build standards.

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Speaker 2: They came in, they talked to us, they talked through

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Speaker 2: the program they were going to implement to make that right,

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Speaker 2: and it had to be demolished. They had to bring

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Speaker 2: classrooms on site. It was a really thorough process. There

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Speaker 2: were fantastic communications all about that. There was I mean

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Speaker 2: it just NOBE even mentioned it in relation to that.

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Speaker 2: So it's about the same years apparently the thing has happened.

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Speaker 2: We were really already did with this other big block

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Speaker 2: that was having to come down that was pretty important

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Speaker 2: and was being dealt with plus in with COVID. I

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Speaker 2: just think it got lost somewhere. He said, Well, then

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Speaker 2: we knew the language, we knew what that meant. We

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Speaker 2: would have been equally concerned if we've heard about it

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Speaker 2: for another block.

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Speaker 1: He also says that the building is still safe.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, again, I think this is engineering language. So it's

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Speaker 2: to do with probability. The probability of there being a

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Speaker 2: one one thousand year earthquake for the time period that

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Speaker 2: we have to use that before they start remediation is very,

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Speaker 2: very low, and both engineer reports engineer's reports say that,

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Speaker 2: and the board accepts that advice. But there's a separate

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Speaker 2: part that follows it, which is that sure, the seismic

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Speaker 2: risk might be low, but if that was to happen,

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Speaker 2: the consequences of that would be severe. And so the

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Speaker 2: board is looking at the consequences and saying they're not

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Speaker 2: prepared to take that no if fearing a step further

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Speaker 2: and thought about the people in the block.

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Speaker 1: I don't under It's not a whole lot.

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Speaker 2: By the way, it's just the top two floors.

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Speaker 1: Julia, thank you. I appreciate a best of luck dealing

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Speaker 1: with the Ministry of Education. This is the Ministry of Education,

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Speaker 1: Julia Davidson, the Wellington Girls College principal. For more from

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