Flood Update 47 1710hrs 11 January 2012

Posted by Nelson Tasman Civil Defence on 11 January 2012

EQC and Section 124 Update

As the recovery from the December rain events continues the EQC have been working through the 750 claims they have received.

Recovery Manager Michael Schruer said the EQC’s geotechnical engineers have started inspecting affected properties.

“While there is still a fair amount of work to do throughout the region there is certainly light at the end of the tunnel for many individual homeowners.” 

The EQC’s geotechnical engineers will be releasing their reports to the respective Councils of the inspections they have carried out on private properties with the wording “the geotechnical risk is no worse than before the flood event of 14 December”. This wording will allow the Councils to consider removal of S124 notices if they were issued solely for geotechnical reasons. 

“This is a very important point we have to stress to property owners.  A number of S124 notices have been issued for building safety and insanitary conditions that have been caused by land movement these will have to be rechecked by the Councils’ building inspectors before the building’s status is finalised.”

“If, however, there are no additional reasons for the S124 notice other than land movement in the vicinity a simple phone call could be the all it takes to gain entry to the property on a permanent basis”, said Mr Schruer

Only the Tasman District and Nelson City Councils’ building consent units can approve the removal of the S124 notice once the property has been considered no longer dangerous or insanitary. This means in most cases property owners covered by EQC will not require an additional geotechnical report for the Councils to remove the S124 notice.

In some cases of S124s being issued for reasons other than geotechnical, each Councils’ building units have the option to issue a notice to fix with reasonably tight timeframes for  remediation allowing  the S124 to be removed.

The removal of a S124 notice does negate the need for the property owner and /or their insurance company to retain the services of a geotechnical engineers to design or undertake any remedial work.

In the first instance property owners who have received a geotechnical report from EQC should ring their respective Councils.