• Residents in a central Wellington apartment block felt ‘shaking’, hours after a 5.7 magnitude quake struck the city.

• They were evacuated as a precaution late last night, before being allowed back in around midnight.

• The building only opened last year and was prized as Wellington’s first base-isolated apartment development.

An apartment block in central Wellington was evacuated overnight after some residents reported “shaking in the building”.

Fire and Emergency Central shift manager Murray Dunbar said FENZ received reports late last night that “could indicate structural damage” at a residential apartment complex on Victoria St.

Wellington was struck by a 5.7 magnitude earthquake earlier in the day.

Residents were evacuated with Wellington City Council setting up a welfare centre in nearby Willis St while engineers carried out an assessment.

The all-clear was given around midnight with residents allowed back in, two hours after being cleared out.

In a statement, David McGuinness - managing director of Willis Bond, the building’s developer - said the alarm was triggered by one resident who called Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) citing physical disturbance in their apartment.

“Upon inspection no issues were found. No concerns were raised by other residents.”

He said the building performed exactly as expected from a base isolated building “with gold standard seismic resilience”.

McGuinness said a thorough inspection by the team concluded there was no evidence of structural or any other damage.

“This was in its truest sense, a false alarm.

• Wellington struck by near 6.0 earthquake
• Strong earthquake shakes Hawke's Bay, felt by over 2000 people

“That said, it was an excellent example of the responsiveness of our emergency services who provided a rapid, calm, and cautious response.

“We stand by the fact that base isolation is the gold standard for seismic resilience, and the fact that the building has been thoroughly inspected following this incident and found to have no damage is the best way to illustrate this.”

A Wellington apartment block was evacuated last night after residents said they felt shaking in the building.

McGuinness said the event was still a huge inconvenience for residents but luckily one of them owns a nearby cafe and opened the premises so evacuees could gather while the inspection took place.

One person earlier told the Herald the “physical disturbance” was shaking.

The Victoria Lane Apartments opened in March last year and were prized as Wellington’s first base-isolated apartment development.

The project at 161 Victoria St includes 24 base isolators, effectively separating the building structure from the ground. The building’s also wrapped in a diagonal grid of steel.

The combination of these two resilience design measures means the building should withstand a one in 1000-year earthquake, compared to conventionally built high-rise buildings designed to stand a one in 100-year seismic event.

Several buildings in the city have been checked over following the earthquake that hit at 5.08am yesterday, located 25km west of Wellington in Cook Strait.

The earthquake was the strongest recorded in New Zealand since a magnitude 5.7 event just over a year ago on September 20, 2023, near Geraldine in Canterbury.

It was also the latest in a recent series of quakes in Cook Strait, which included a 4.8 event on August 5 and a 5.0 event last Tuesday, just northeast of Seddon.

More than 37,000 people reported feeling it, according to the GeoNet website. It was detected as far north as Auckland and far south as Christchurch.

A magnitude 4.8 earthquake also struck late on Sunday night in southeastern Hawke’s Bay, about 5km from Pōrangahau.

It had a shallow depth of 16km and was considered a strong quake by GNS Science.

The GeoNet website showed more than 2000 people across the central and lower North Island reported feeling the shake about 11.20pm.

There were eight aftershocks between 12.05am and 4.05am, the strongest being a magnitude 3.3 quake just before 3am.