By Annabelle Tukia
A building in Cashel Mall that killed four people has been today's focus for the Canterbury earthquakes royal commission.
A woman who worked next door to it told the enquiry she could never understand why people were allowed back in after the September and Boxing Day quakes.
The building's walls failed, sending rubble crashing down on neighbouring shops and into the popular mall. Four people were killed.
Beverley Broomhall worked as a cake decorator in the bakery next door. Today she told the royal commission of her terror as the quake struck.
"I remember looking up and saw all this horrible dust and muck coming at me from the bakehouse. It was difficult to breathe… there was almighty crash and I looked up and I could see the sky."
Ms Broomhall's colleague Jan Smith said she struggled to understand how the building got a green sticker after the Boxing Day quake.
"The cracks in that building became more noticeable after Boxing Day," she says. "I did notice cracks on both sides of that building, I thought the cracks looked pretty bad."
After the Boxing Day quake the building was deemed dangerous and was red-stickered because a parapet beam above the street was loose.
Opus engineers told the inquiry that once that was secured they were satisfied the building could be occupied once more.
"I physically checked it," says Alistair Boyce, Opus engineer. "I made sure that all the tie rods had been installed properly and tensioned and with regards to the connection to the parapet. When I hopped out of the crane I tried to give the parapets a push just to make sure they weren't wobbly or cracked."
Marcus Elliot, the lawyer representing the victims' families, also questioned the buildings green sticker.
"People may wonder how an earthquake-prone building was re-opened after an aftershock sequence," he says.
"They may do, but that was situation for a number of buildings around the city and that was the process that was in place at the time," says structural engineer Andrew Brown.
It's a process that's bound to come under close scrutiny by the commissioners.
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