Dunedin is sending four experienced staff members to the Hurunui district to help with earthquake recovery in the area.
The four, two building inspectors and two building consent processors, have previous experience from when Dunedin City Council staff helped after the 2011 Christchurch earthquake.
They will be in the area for at least a week. If they are there longer, as could be required, that could affect consent processing times in Dunedin.
But the Dunedin City Council said the initiative was the right thing to do.
Community services general manager Simon Pickford said in situations where there had been an earthquake, one key issue was to establish how safe buildings were to use.
The four would be undertaking rapid building usability assessment, where inspectors go from building to building to quickly assess the impact of the damage.
That involved both external and internal inspections to ascertain if they were habitable.
Apart from the Christchurch experience, the four had also had training in rapid assessment.
Mr Pickford said if the council needed to send more, "we’ve got more people on standby that could go".
"We asked the team, and they all put their hand up," Mr Pickford said, despite family and other responsibilities in Dunedin.
The work was "hard graft".
"They do pretty intense days and they see a whole lot of pretty distressing things."
Hurunui was south of Kaikoura, which was badly affected by Monday’s earthquake, but included Hanmer Springs, which was near the epicentre.
If staff members were needed for more than a week, "there could be some impact on consent processing times for DCC customers".
"However, there is clearly an urgent need for the earthquake-affected areas, and if Dunedin ever found itself in a similar situation we would certainly require and appreciate the help from outside the city," Mr Pickford said.
Mayor Dave Cull said the council had responded to a request for assistance from its northern colleagues.
"Our thoughts have very much been with those communities impacted by the earthquake and ongoing aftershocks and this is the very least that we can do as a council to help."
Mr Cull said if Dunedin people wanted to help those affected by the earthquake the best way to do so was to donate money to relief funds set up, including the Red Cross Appeal.
People were being asked not to donate goods to the affected regions at this stage.
