Christchurch was still recovering from an earthquake in September 2010 when a shallow quake struck on a Tuesday lunchtime, on a fault no one had known existed. The epicentre was only 10 kilometres from the central business district and 5 kilometres deep. Buildings already weakened by the earlier quakes gave way. The collapse of the six-storey CTV Building alone killed 115 people, and the spire of Christ Church Cathedral fell. The investigations that followed changed the way New Zealand judged the safety of its buildings.
When the September 2010 earthquake struck, the Anglican cathedral in the heart of the city stayed standing and nobody died. Many people in Christchurch saw that as a small miracle. Five months later the luck ran out. The February quake happened at lunchtime, when offices, shops and streets were full, and it brought down the cathedral's spire. Rescuers expected to find bodies under the rubble, but found none.
The worst loss was a few blocks away. The CTV Building on Madras Street was not an old building; it had gone up in the 1980s. Council inspectors and a structural engineer had checked it after the September quake. It housed a television station, a medical centre and an English-language school, and its total collapse caused about 60 per cent of the day's deaths.
The disaster led to two coronial inquests, a royal commission and professional complaints against the building's engineers. Christchurch pulled down much of its central city and rebuilt it. The shell of the cathedral became the focus of a long and expensive argument over whether to rebuild it.