The Hutt City Emergency Response Team (HCERT) is the Hutt City’s local Civil Defence emergency and disaster response team, covering all areas of the Hutt City community. The role of HCERT, in conjunction with wider emergency services, is to provide 24 hour on-call resilient emergency response services for the Hutt City. The team carries the national registration number of NZRT-18.

HCERT is a volunteer-based organisation with members of the team giving up their time to respond to incidents at any time of the day or night, 365 days of the year. They maintain high levels of training which include urban search and rescue (USAR) post-earthquake and disaster work, technical rope rescue, flood response work, swift water rescue, medical and trauma care, communications and welfare.

HCERT has been closely connected to the Hutt City Council (HCC) since the team was first established in 2003, originally as a part of the Council, however are now governed by a seperate Trust.

HCERT also assist Police with search and rescue operations and FENZ with fire ground support roles. Although primarily responsible for immediate response to assist the community in the Hutt City area during disasters and emergency incidents, the team responds to calls for assistance throughout the Wellington Region as well as on a national basis as required.

Since October 2023 the team has attended 100+ incidents including two deployments both during and after cyclone Gabrielle.