Gardens Medical Centre was among a host of Albury high-rise buildings evacuated and temporarily closed as a result of the 5.9-magnitude earthquake recorded in Victoria on Wednesday.
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Several patients and staff were inside the six-storey building on Wodonga Place when the tremor was felt after 9.15am.
Gardens Medical Group was among the tenants that asked everyone inside to leave the premises before entry to the building was locked, with some appointments abandoned by other health services.
Albury Councillor and surgeon John Stuchbery, who works for Insight Private Hospitals on level five, was in the middle of a consultation with a patient at the time the tremor was felt and labelled it a "considerable overreaction" to evacuate.
"I've got no idea why they closed the building. It rocked backwards and forwards by about two centimetres," he said.
"It's obviously a modern construction and I assume it has been built to earthquake standards, but for whatever reason they've closed the whole building, including the private hospital upstairs.
"It wasn't scary, it was a gentle earthquake and we knew it was an earthquake as soon as it started because nothing else makes a building sway back and forth.
"It barely interrupted the consultation.
"I finished off seeing that patient and then saw the next patient. That patient was actually in Christchurch for the Christchurch earthquake (in 2011) and said the one we had was pretty minor.
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"I was happy to keep seeing patients, but the powers that be closed the building so no more patients could get in and I had to give up and go home.
"I'm not sure if it's regulation or not, but I would be very surprised if every high-rise building on the east coast of Australia has been evacuated today."
Lavington's Zauner Construction developed Gardens Medical Centre and is housed in a five, soon to be six-storey building on Griffith Road, which also had to be suddenly evacuated.
Company chief Garry Zauner explained the processes in place when a situation such as this arises.
"We fully understand the frustrations around the day however all buildings and responsible organisations are required to have emergency management plans to keep our customers and team members safe no matter the scale of the building," he said.
"There is no point having a plan if it is not then followed and I am very pleased to confirm that all our teams, our tenants, and customers all performed perfectly to the management plans and everyone was very professional.
"Modern buildings are designed to a very high earthquake code but it still makes sense, particularly in what has proven to be a very strong quake today, to follow the management plans agreed upon for these circumstances and after an engineering check on all buildings under our management, we confirmed everything had behaved as it was designed to do.
"All buildings were then confirmed and cleared to return to business as usual well before lunchtime."
Albury's council offices were also cleared out for a short period.
"Our people in the Kiewa Street building evacuated according to procedure and returned to work when it was deemed safe," Albury mayor Kevin Mack said.
Engineer checks were undertaken on the Hume Freeway overpass between High Street and Bandiana Link.
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