This paper describes the analysis of a large data base of actual costs of damage to houses in Napier in the magnitude Ms = 7.8 Hawke's Bay earthquake of 1931. This event occurred prior to the introduction of any earthquake design regulations in New Zealand. The town of Napier was sited over the source of this large shallow event, and therefore it may be presumed that it was subjected to about the strongest shaking likely to occur in an earthquake. Mean values and statistical distributions of damage ratios have been estimated for houses built on rock, on firm beach deposits, and on soft recent alluvium. This is the first time world-wide that a fully representative quantification of damage has been made for a zone of such strong earthquake shaking, for any class of construction, with or without quantification of microzoning effects. This study examines the damage to housing due to ground shaking and ground damage, and excludes the effects of earthquake-induced fires.

This paper describes the seismic hazard near the Wellington Fault in Petone, and the measures taken to protect a new printing press made of brittle cast iron against earthquake attack. The printing press, owned by Wellington Newspapers, was located just 20 m from the Wellington Fault. Mounting the specially designed building housing the press on a seismic isolation system, lead-rubber bearings, reduced the estimated loads and deflections on the press by a factor of 8-10 compared with the non-isolated case. As a result the press should suffer only modest damage in earthquake shaking somewhat stronger than that required by the New Zealand earthquake code for the design of buildings.