Building problems 'ignored', says engineer

John Scarry, now a contract design engineer with Ponsonby engineers Lewis and Williamson, said yesterday that the new Building Act passed this month had dealt with leaky houses but "does absolutely nothing to address the serious problems in structural engineering".

The president of the Structural Engineering Society, Dr Barry Davidson, said he was "exasperated" too. "This [act] has been written by people who don't even know what an earthquake is," he said.

"It's a time bomb waiting to go off. When we get an earthquake in Turkey or somewhere we smugly think that's a Third World country and it won't happen here, but I wonder how smug they are when it happens in Wellington?

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