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Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell had nothing but praise for the incredible efforts of the emergency response teams when he visited Mangawhai on January 31.
Fire & Emergency NZ Northland manager Wipari Henwood gave an overview of the initial response to the tornado, saying at first it was chaos, as the Mangawhai Volunteer Fire Brigade (MVFB) crew were blocked from accessing the Molesworth Drive fire station.
“Chief Fire Officer Graham Kerrigan was waiting for his members but they couldn’t get there … then there was a slow realisation of the impact of the incident,” he says. “Our comms team started sending trucks from all over the place to try and get to the epicentre. We had two calls where people’s lives were threatened and that’s who we were trying to target. It took some effort to coordinate to get our people there.”
He said the fact that there were no street lights due to the power outages made coordination difficult in the early morning and it was not until dawn that crews were able to see more clearly what they were trying to deal with.
“Power lines and trees down everywhere, and obviously, a panicked community trying to deal with the situation. To bring that chaos into some order took a long time,” he said. “With power out right across the area, it was great foresight of the council to have an emergency precinct with a lot of resilience, with generators and water supplies.”
Once the civil defence team was up and running, led by Kaipara’s Civil Defence Emergency Management (CDEM) controller John Burt, Henwood said they were able to get “proper situational awareness” and start to attend to all fire calls.”
Burt said that having the fire station set up as the command centre to sort through “an awful lot of information” and work out the emergency response with his team was pretty amazing.
“When I got the call in the early hours saying there’d been a civil fire emergency, I thought, who the hell am I going to get hold of at 4.30 in the morning on a long weekend?” he said. “So thanks to everybody who answered the phone and turned up, they all put their heart and soul into the response, particularly in those first few chaotic hours as we tried to build a picture and prioritise what needed to get done.”
Northland MP Grant McCallum recognised the police involvement on the day and their handling of “quite emotional” situations at the checkpoint.
“They had to deal with some really difficult situations as some people couldn’t understand why they couldn’t go up the road, so the police did an outstanding job.”
Northpower’s long 18-hour days to clear the cordoned areas of fallen lines and restore electricity supply were applauded and KDC councillor Gordon Lambeth highlighted the efforts from the private sector.
“Local contractors who care about the community turned up and did the work for nothing,” he says.
“The response from all services and everyone was tremendous.”
Mitchell attended eight local states of emergency last year and stated that the Mangawhai tornado scene “was, without a doubt, one of the most difficult ones”.
“This one had huge challenges because it was so sudden. No one could anticipate it. There were power lines down, access was very hard for first responders, there were seriously injured people and others were more or less shell-shocked. There wasn’t any order so it was pretty catastrophic for everyone involved,” he said. “You all played such a critical role in terms of not just the response, but in the recovery. You’ve stood up and done an outstanding job.”
He said central government understood that it had to contribute and was working hard “to make sure that we get that done as quickly as possible.” Mitchell also said lessons had been learned since Cyclone Gabrielle ravaged the North Island in 2023 with extensive flooding, and “we now have world-class emergency management people right through the country”.
“From the leadership of mayors and councils, right through our first responders and the Emergency Operation Centres, there’s a real will to constantly improve and an awareness that we’re a country that’s going to get hit by these weather events, so we’ve got to be the best people we can be.”
