Fieldtrip to Parliament

The day after we arrived in Wellington, we signed up for a tour of New Zealand's Parliament. We learned that earthquakes and fires have posed major threats to Parliament (and its adjacent library) for the past 100 years. First there was the great fire of 1907, followed by three successive fires in 1992 during the buildings' restoration project. In addition, Wellington sits along a major fault line and engineers in recent years have undertaken a massive refurbishment effort to ensure the safety of the buildings' structure. For instance, base isolators located in the basement are made of a rubber and steel composite; they sit between the foundation of the building and the building itself. This allows them to shift and separate during earthquakes, which helps maintain the Parliament building's structural integrity.