My Account
Erosion on Stanmore Bay beach, July last year.
It seems that with Civil Defence, like everything else at Auckland Council, good things take time.
In 2010, when Auckland Council was formed, it inherited a mix of information about the hazards (such as storms and tsunami) that potentially threaten each of its local board areas.
Since then, Civil Defence has been bringing this information together into reports for each local board area – these were published last month on the Auckland Council website.
The idea of the reports, prepared by a Civil Defence hazards advisor, is to raise awareness of local hazards and point to further information about preparedness for the community. The Hibiscus & Bays Local Board Hazard Report holds few surprises, making it plain that the area is at risk from tsunami, storms, drought, coastal inundation and erosion, flooding and land (especially cliff) instability. The likelihood of infrastructure failures, including power, transport and telecommunications are also highlighted.
Because a tsunami would be funnelled through the area between Coromandel Peninsula and Great Barrier Island, Orewa Beach is one of the highest risk areas of tsunami in Auckland.
The former Rodney District Council had planned to put an early warning siren on Orewa Beach, however this was canned by Civil Defence last year, because in its view the sirens are ineffective.
Civil Defence head of emergency management planning, Richard Woods, says in fact the financial viability of retaining existing sirens around Auckland is currently under review.
“They cost a lot to run and maintain and some of the West Auckland ones are having issues and falling off,” he says.
A paper will go to the Civil Defence & Emergency Management committee on August 25 “to summarise the approach to that review”.
Last year Civil Defence advised that a helicopter mounted alert system, to be used Auckland-wide, was to be trialled. It was scheduled to arrive a year ago, but in fact didn’t come in until March of this year. It is now in the final stages of testing.
Mr Woods says that other alerting options include smartphone apps, text message alerts via websites and social media.
He says in due course there will be community engagement on the Hibiscus Coast about other options for preparedness – a similar process in Omaha resulted in initiatives that include message boards around the community highlighting evacuation routes.
The Hibiscus & Bays Local Board Hazard report is linked here [5MB] and can also be found on the Auckland Council website.
