Today the hearings began into the February 22nd earthquake to find out why buildings collapsed and why so many people died. The hearings are like a court with a judge and two other people. Their job is to listen to experts and witnesses, and at the end to write a report which gives recommendations for change. A recommendation is a strong suggestion for the government to make changes. The hearings will not finish until after March next year.
The first thing that the judge did today was to welcome people in English and in Maori. The welcome was translated into nine languages, for the families of the foreigners who were killed that day. Many family members of those who died attended this morning. After the welcome, the names of all 182 people who died as a result of earthquake were read out. This took about 10 minutes and was followed by 2 minutes silence.
After that scientists explained what happened during the earthquake on February 22nd. The centre of that earthquake was right under the central city and was very shallow. There were extremely high levels of shaking. Many buildings collapsed and some taller buildings lost their stairs. Most of the people were killed by buildings which collapsed.
The question everyone wants to know is: why did those buildings collapse? At the end of the hearing, we hope the report will tell us how to make sure that buildings will not collapse next time there is an earthquake
Vocabulary
Royal Commission is a like a court. It is royal because the government (it represents the Queen) asked for these hearings.
hearings – a chance for people to say what happened and for the judge to hear what they say
collapse – fall down
witnesses – people who saw what happened
shallow – not deep
Questions
1. Why do we have 2 minutes silence on a sad occasion like this?
2. There is also a Royal Commission on the Pike River Mine. Why do we have a Royal Commission for these two events?
Hi ,mrs,mr,
I have a question is;
‘very shallow’ is that a normal conversation word ?
or nearly superficial
(a Dutch 77 year ) Martin Soeters.
“very shallow” here meant about 5km deep. It is similar to “superficial” although we would not normally use superficial for an earthquake. It is used for a superficial wound (injury) which is only skin-deep and ideas which do not have much thought behind them. “Superficial” can suggest that it is not serious.