Engineers to help police probe liability in deadly Christchurch quake building

New Zealand Police have stepped up inquiries into a building that collapsed killing 115 people, most of them young students from Asia, during the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake. Police in the city said Monday they had engaged an engineering firm to review information on the collapse of the CTV Building, just over three years since the Feb. 22 quake. The review is part of an ongoing assessment to determine whether the police should launch a criminal investigation in connection with deaths. Detective Superintendent Peter Read said the police had contracted Beca, a large engineering firm with offices throughout New Zealand, to provide an expert opinion on engineering issues raised in the assessment to date. Their review would involve a panel of senior engineers, and the panel's opinion would be subject to an international peer review, Read said in a statement. A report by the Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission of Inquiry in 2012 detailed how the CTV building, which was designed in 1986 and completed around 1988, had a "design that was deficient in a number of important respects" and should never have been issued with a construction permit because it failed to comply with building regulations. The commission also found the building was never properly structurally assessed after being damaged in strong earthquakes on Sept. 4 and Dec. 26, 2010, despite being inspected by three building officials. "While the findings of the Royal Commission are of great assistance to police in our assessment, the terms of reference set for the Royal Commission meant it did not make any determinations as to the question of liability," Read said. "Police must be able to establish facts beyond reasonable doubt, whereas the Commission of Inquiry made many of its determinations on the balance of probabilities," he said. "We also need to be sure there is sufficient evidence available to provide a reasonable prospect of conviction of any person charged with a crime." Read said the highly technical nature of the assessment meant expert advice was needed to help identify any act or omission that could have led to the building collapse. Police hoped to be in a position to make a final decision on whether any criminal investigation will be commenced by the third quarter of 2014. The New Zealand government bought the CTV site in July last year and plans to include it in a mainly residential area on the edge of the city's new central business district. Most of the 185 people killed in the 6.3-magnitude quake died in the six-storey building, which collapsed and caught fire. The CTV victims included 64 Asian students studying at an English language school: 17 students from the Chinese mainland, 28 from Japan, 10 from the Philippines, six from Thailand, two from the Republic of Korea, and one from China's Taiwan.