Recent earthquakes in the South Island and Japan have not only shocked the community, but also reignited concerns about the lack of tsunami warning sirens here on the Hibiscus Coast.
A draft Public Alerting Strategy from Auckland Civil Defence that is expected to include the option of installing emergency warning sirens in Orewa will be considered by Auckland Council early next year.
Auckland Civil Defence is preparing the report as a result of its review into upgrading and extending emergency warning systems in the region.
Rodney Councillor Greg Sayers told Hibiscus Matters back in August that Civil Defence is considering installing as many as five high-powered sirens in Orewa. He said that the proposed sirens cost in the vicinity of $50,000 each.
Auckland currently has 44 fixed tsunami warning sirens across nine sites in Rodney and Waitakere. They were installed in 2008 and 2010 and do not meet current technical standards. All new and existing siren installations will need to meet the standards, set by the Ministry of Civil Defence, by June 2020.
The Ministry has concerns about the effectiveness of sirens, which include creating “a false sense of comfort” in that the public expects to be warned by the siren (rather than responding to the earthquake itself); the effects of frequent false alarms; and that earthquake damage can make sirens inoperable. The Ministry says these concerns were evident in the Japanese tsunami of March 2011.
However, Civil Defence also admits that sirens can be useful, in particular for alerting the public at night when other forms of communication (such as cell phones and radio) may not be as effective.
Local Councillor John Watson has been appointed as deputy chair of Council’s Civil Defence Committee, which will be considering the report.
He says sirens would be particularly useful on the Hibiscus Coast.
“I believe that as many different forms of warning as is practicable should be employed as individual circumstances obviously vary,” Cr Watson says. “In my position as Deputy Chair of the Civil Defence committee I will be pushing for sirens to be installed on the Hibiscus Coast.”
