New Zealand to complete investigation into deadly Christchurch quake building

A police investigation into the collapse of a building that killed 185 people in the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake could be completed later this year, the New Zealand Police announced Tuesday.

Any decision relating to prosecutions regarding the collapse of the CTV building would be made some time after that following a review of the information, said a police statement.

Most of the 185 people including 64 Asian students studying at an English language school killed in the 6.3-magnitude quake of February 2011 died in the six-storey building, which collapsed and caught fire.

The police announced they would advance a criminal probe which started in September last year after assessing a large amount of information regarding the collapse and engaged an engineering consultancy to provide expert opinion to the investigation.

"Police have made steady progress with the investigation with a number of very technical, complex and time consuming inquiry streams being pursued," Detective Superintendent Peter Read said in the statement.

"The engineers' expert opinion is almost complete with some more computer modeling and structural tests yet to be completed," he said.

"The results of these tests and the remainder of the investigation are not expected to be completed until later this year," he added.

In September last year, the police said the expert opinion would include whether there were any serious departures from accepted standards by those involved in the building's design or construction that could amount to gross negligence.

A report by the Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission of Inquiry detailed how the CTV building, which was designed in 1986 and completed around 1988, had a "design that was deficient in a number of important respects" and should never have been issued with a construction permit because it failed to comply with building regulations.

The commission also found the building was never properly structurally assessed after being damaged in strong earthquakes on Sept. 4 and Dec. 26, 2010, despite being inspected by three building officials.

The New Zealand government bought the CTV site in July last year and planed to include it in a mainly residential area on the edge of the city's new central business district. Endi