WELLINGTON, July 29 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand police investigating the collapse of a building that killed 115 people -- most of them young students from Asia -- in the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake said Friday they will dig into the building's foundations.
Police would begin an examination of the south wall foundation and parts of the north wall foundation on the site where the city-center Canterbury Television (CTV) building formerly stood, Detective Superintendent Peter Read said in a statement.
Contractors would begin work on Monday and dig eight test pits or trenches to allow soil specialists and engineers to examine the soil and foundations.
"This site work is expected to be completed within the week and the site will then be reinstated to its former condition," said Read.
"The process to physically rebuild and test critical elements of the building structure, which was announced by police in September last year, has now been completed. The results of this testing have been peer reviewed and factored into the ongoing investigation," he said.
The investigation was nearing its closing stages and the outcome and any decisions on criminal culpability would be communicated first to the families and then publicly.
This was expected to occur later this year, but police were unable to give a more definitive timeframe at this stage.
A report by the Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission of Inquiry detailed how the six-storey 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.
Most of the 185 people killed in the 6.3-magnitude quake of February 2011 died in the building when it collapsed and caught fire.
The CTV victims included 64 Asian students studying at an English language school.
The New Zealand government bought the CTV site in 2014 and plans to include it in a mainly residential area on the edge of the city's new central business district.
