Victim's father disappointed no admission of mistakes

6:17 pm on 26 January 2012

The father of a man killed trying to escape a collapsing building during the February earthquake in Christchurch says he is disappointed none of those responsible for checking the building have admitted they may have made mistakes.

The Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission is looking into the 22 February collapse of the Iconic Bar in central Christchurch, which killed one of the people working there, Jaime Gilbert.

Mr Gilbert was 22.

Questions are being asked about the adequacy of temporary repairs done following the September earthquake.

Jaime Gilbert's father, Robert, says it is not good enough for people to say they did everything correctly.

He says unless mistakes are admitted then people are doomed to repeat the errors of the past.

" 'People are under pressure, people made mistakes, we would do things differently' - for goodness sake surely we would do things differently if the same thing happened again.

"That's how we learn, that's how our society needs to go forward. We've got to learn from these terrible events and if we are standing up and saying we'll do the same thing again, well what have we learnt. We've learnt nothing."