1 Aug 2016

Widower still fighting for justice

5:48 pm on 1 August 2016

A man whose wife died in the collapse of the CTV building in the 2011 Christchurch earthquake says he will never give up the fight to see somebody held accountable.

The ruins of the CTV building

The building collapsed in the February 2011 earthquake, killing 115 people. Photo: AFP

There has been a two-year police investigation into the failure of the building in the earthquake with investigators returning to the site of the tragedy today.

Maan Alkaisi.

Maan Alkaisi Photo: RNZ / Nicola Grigg

Engineers and soil scientists were excavating the ground and examining the buried foundations of the six-storey building looking for clues to its collapse.

Maan Alkaisi, whose wife Maysoon Abbas worked in the building as a doctor, said his life changed completely when he realised she was not coming home from work that day.

"What I'm fighting now is to make sure that something like this will not happen again, and that we learn the lessons.

"And the only way to ensure that is to hold someone accountable so we send a message to all engineers that this is not acceptable."

He said his wife had been planning to leave the company.

"She felt that this is not the right place and this is why she was seeking and applied for other jobs. And she was really moving, I mean, it would take her another 10 days [then] she would have moved."

Mr Alkaisi said he was confident the police would lay charges over the building's collapse.

Get the RNZ app

for ad-free news and current affairs