Earlier in the month, we reported we had distributed surveys for our repeat “Perceptions of Building Safety” survey in the Wellington CBD, which explored people’s experience of the August 16, 6.6 magnitude Seddon earthquake. We wanted to repeat some of the key questions from our original survey to assess whether the earthquake changed people’s perceptions.

We had a great response of around 45%, and while there is still plenty of data to work through, here are a few of the highlights related to people’s experience of the earthquake so far.

The majority of participants were at work (70.7%) in the CBD (78.6%) at the time the earthquake struck. 3.6% of participants reported that the building they were in was known to them to be “earthquake-prone” (less than 33% of NBS).
The majority adopted the “drop, cover and hold” position (55.4%) and even more (70% total) indicated they would do this in future.
The key priorities after the quake were to contact family and friends (76.9%) and travel home (50%). Only 1.6% travelled to higher ground. 40% went in search of information about the earthquake.
The majority of the sample had taken the train that morning (59.1%) so with the trains out, they needed to shift modes. Nearly 80% of those that changed modes ended up carpooling, mostly with people they knew (65.8%), but some with strangers either informally (10.7%) or facilitated by police (2.8%).
Even for those that didn’t have to change modes, the event caused changes to their travel, most often the delay of their trip, usually to avoid congestion. On average, their trip took almost an hour longer than normal.

The number crunching continues, and we are about to start examining the building safety perceptions data shortly.

Community

Resilience

We study resilience to natural hazard events.

How do cities and people prepare for, respond to, and recover from such events?

ACCEPTABLE SEISMIC RISK IN COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS

BEHAVIOURAL RESPONSE & RECOVERY INDICATORS

DYNAMICS OF URBAN & REGIONAL RECOVERY

Resilient Infrastructure

We study resilience to natural hazard events. How do cities and people prepare, respond to, and recover from such events?