Building standards
pp. 38-39 · Read in the full issue
a bitter pill
THE fact that the poor standard of buildings was responsible for a lot of the house loss and damage caused by Cyclone Val will be a bitter pill for Western Samoa to swallow.
A ASI million AIDAB-funded pro gramme from March 1988 to September 1990 had building codes drawn up by then Suva-based engineer Kris Ayyar to ensure modern homes and buildings in Pacific countries are reasonably cyclone secure. But Western Samoa, perhaps the worst hit by Cyclone Ofa on February 2-3 in 1990, pulled out of the Pacific Building Standards programme after it failed to have Ayyar relocate his office to Apia. They had felt a building code facilitated in Western Samoa would be
more appropriate.
The government also had seemed to equate a building code to higher costs, but Ayyar said this did not need to be the case. The difference could be in how the same building materials were connected.
AIDAB spokesman from Apia, Tony Melville, said many of the houses had merely been patched up after Ofa and offered little resistence to last month’s Cyclone Val. He said home owners were in a “catch 22 situation” after Ofa they couldn’t afford to repair their houses to the required standard. The situation,!
Melville said, was repeating itself. □!
Businesses damaged