With increasing mining depth and thus higher stress environments, rockbursts are becoming an increasing problem world-wide. Much research has been directed toward establishing a rockburst hazard assessment method by relating seismic source intensity to the peak ground motion characteristics at an opening and further by involving some empirical indices (e.g. excavation vulnerability potential). However, the interaction between seismic waves and the excavation surfaces is not taken into account. In this paper the influence of fault-slip induced seismic waves on openings has been investigated. The effect of the location and orientation with respect to the hypocenter of the seismic event has been investigated. Openings located at the same distance from the source but at eight different orientations were numerically analyzed using the discontinuum code UDEC. The results show that the opening’s location plays a significant role for the Peak Particle Velocity (PPV) on their boundaries. It was found that the PPV is highly influenced by the P-wave and S-wave radiation patterns. The amplitude and direction of the PPV show anisotropic behavior, even when the distance from the target to the seismic source is the same. The anisotropic behavior of the PPV becomes more pronounced with increasing distance to the seismic source. The study shows that the magnitude-distance-PPV method used in support design and rockburst hazard assessment needs to be reconsidered in order to take the effect of wave radiation pattern into account.