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New Zealand is an earthquake-prone country.
To help us manage the risk to public safety, we have a national system that categorises New Zealand into high, medium and low seismic risk areas and sets time frames for identifying, assessing and doing seismic work on earthquake-prone buildings.
Understanding this system is important for everyone’s safety.
It starts with local councils identifying buildings that may be earthquake prone and priority buildings which have tighter time frames for seismic work, then informing owners.
Building owners commission engineering assessments and give reports to their council which checks the assessments and decides if the buildings are earthquake prone.
If they are, the council issues an EPB notice, which must be clearly displayed and logs the details in the public EPB register.
Owners strengthen or remove the buildings or parts, by set deadlines. If they don’t, councils have powers to take action.
Get more detail about protecting yourself and others by checking out ‘Managing earthquake-prone buildings’ at www.building.govt.nz.