Australia should consider simple fixes to building parapets and other parts of structures that can easily fall during an earthquake, a New Zealand academic who drove legislative change in that country says.

University of Canterbury Associate Professor of Environmental Science Ann Brower says securing unreinforced decorative parts of buildings including parapets, gables and chimneys, is “the smart thing to do” as they are the cheapest to fix, the first to fall and the deadliest when they do.

Dr Brower, who was the sole survivor of a bus crushed in the Christchurch earthquake, pushed for action in New Zealand, leading to the Brower Amendment to the Building Act.

“I’m asking Victoria to please learn from your Kiwi cousins,” she says in an article published on The Conversation website.

“To me, the most predictable losses are the least acceptable. This is especially true when the methods of prevention are as known and straightforward as securing a parapet to the building’s structural core.”

Part of the brick façade of the Betty’s Burgers building in Chapel St in suburban Melbourne collapsed after the 5.9 magnitude Mansfield earthquake on September 22.

Geoscience Australia received more than 40,000 reports from people reporting that they felt the earthquake, a record since the agency started collecting reports.

The earthquake was felt hundreds of kilometres away from the epicentre, from Sydney to Hobart and west to Adelaide, as a result of its size and the area’s geology.

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