CTV disaster: What has been learned?
Fire Service says improvements and learning have not stopped since its heavily criticised response to the disastrous collapse, writes Kurt Bayer
It was New Zealand’s worst natural disaster in modern history. Global experts agreed that the February 22, 2011 earthquake, which claimed 185 lives, would’ve “stretched any fire service in the world”.
But the brave firefighters dragging survivors and bodies from the rubble of collapsed buildings were badly let down by their bosses on that fateful day more than six years ago.
Independent reviews of the New Zealand Fire Service’s performance, along with a coronial inquest, found the top brass “missing in action”.
“Where was the brass when it was needed?” Nigel Hampton, QC, asked during an inquest into the deaths of eight people who survived the sixstorey CTV Building collapse but died before they could be rescued.
The lack of leadership cost lives, some families of victims say. There was a lack of expert training, cheap or missing gear, and holes in emergency response protocols and co-ordination.
The catastrophic pancaking of the CTV Building, killing 115 people, resulted in the biggest shake-up of the Fire Service in more than six decades.
While Coroner Gordon Matenga cleared the service of causing any deaths, he made eight recommendations to improve New Zealand’s response to any future major disasters. Three years after those recommendations, in a detailed response to Herald inquiries, the Fire Service says every recommendation has been addressed and “subsequently improved”.
Many systems have already been tested in responses to major quakes in Kaikoura, Seddon and Wellington, as well as the flooding in the Bay of Plenty town of Edgecumbe this year.
“The earthquake was a disaster on an unprecedented scale that presented many challenges that emergency responders and our firefighters had not faced before,” said Fire Service chief executive and national commander Paul McGill.
“They worked tirelessly to try and save as many people as they could, and the memories and devastation of that day will be with them forever.
“In memory of those who died that day, and respect for their loved ones and those who tried to save them, we continue to learn and improve how we best respond to emergencies.”
The Changes
Since the quakes and the subsequent CTV inquest, the Fire Service has signed a memorandum of understanding with Air New Zealand and the Defence Force, and agreements are in place with Mondial and HIC logistics, to ensure that USAR teams — the crack urban search and rescue units based in Auckland, Palmerston North and Christchurch that specialise in finding and recovering people in dangerous situations — can respond quickly to major events and not be separated from their gear. Twenty-one USAR technicians have completed and maintained specialist “Dogman” training and a further eight have gained International Air Transport Association certification.
It’s now the default position of the Fire Service to accept or request help from a United Nations Disaster Assessment and Co-ordination team — although McGill says it is “dependent on the scale of the event” and based on advice given to the New Zealand Government, which makes the ultimate call.
The New Zealand Deployment Group, chaired by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, has a focus on working together more collaboratively, he says.
The agencies exercise every year, and since the February 2011 quake have developed overseas deployment guidelines — a code of conduct that sets out roles and responsibilities. USAR is also working with light response teams — “aboveground responders” funded and managed by councils and territorial authorities.
The Edgecumbe flooding in April highlighted the new arrangement, McGill said, when light response teams used USAR equipment for rapid damage assessments.
“Light teams can triage the incident with rapid damage assessments, identifying highest risk structures in the crucial first few hours following an earthquake,” McGill said.
A new national response plan says duty staff must remain on duty until relieved, while crews will continue to dispatch calls from communication centres until a command point is established on the ground.
Regional Co-ordination Centres (RCC) across the country have been standardised.
Technology has also improved in recent years. The Fire Service’s rapid damage assessment tool, developed with the Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council, allows crews to feed information in real-time back to the National Co-ordination Centre and National Crisis Management Centre, which “triages” the incident for NZFS and other agencies.
In March 2015, the New Zealand USAR team gained its “heavy” classification from the UN after a 72-hour live exercise, which allows them to deploy overseas and learn from other events and makes it easier for international teams to come here.
More joint training with police and other emergency partners has been done to increase knowledge of who becomes incident controller, and to “ensure it is [very clear] who does what, when, and who is in control”.
When quakes have struck Seddon, Wellington and Kaikoura in recent years, an inter-agency Emergency Operation Centre has been set up. It’s become standard practice for major incidents.
Executive officers, many of whom came under fire for failing to step up in 2011, now must complete tactical and strategic command courses.
In October 2012, an independent review of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Response to the February 22 quake made 108 recommendations on what could be done better in future emergency responses, including greater cooperation between different central and local government agencies and emergency services.
Civil Defence says the “vast majority” of recommendations have been “actioned”.
Police have spent the past four years investigating the CTV Building collapse and seeing whether any individuals face criminal charges. A decision is imminent.
Lessons learned?
During the inquest into the deaths of the eight King’s Education School for English Language students on the CTV Building’s third floor who survived the collapse but could not be rescued alive, Dr Tamara Cvetanova’s widower, Alec Cvetanov, wanted the world to take lessons from the tragedy.
“I want . . . all the rescue services in New Zealand to learn from Tamara’s death so that somebody else does not die in similar circumstances in the future, here or abroad,” he said.
His lawyer at the inquest, Nigel Hampton, QC, was concerned by what he sees as some key omissions in the Fire Service’s post-quake actions, but said: “Unfortunately, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.”
Hampton questioned whether joint training between the Fire Service, the Defence Force and Air New Zealand had been carried out.
There had been none before the Canterbury quakes, and when February 22 struck it was discovered that the USAR gear on its pallets would not fit inside the RNZAF aircraft and had to be repacked and checked again, causing more delays.
It was also found there was insufficient space to accommodate both the USAR people and their gear, which meant they were split up.
He is also worried at the lack of mention of the “imperative need” for incident control points (ICP) at scenes like the one at CTV building collapse.
Training also should go beyond executive officers, he said, as the first and most senior officer at a disaster scene must establish an ICP and, at least, an interim incident controller, which didn’t happen at CTV and had “disastrous consequences”.
Dr Maan Alkaisi, whose wife, Dr Maysoon Abbas, 61, was killed in the CTV Building, said it was “pleasing” to hear that several of the key failings on February 22 had been addressed.
While he had no criticism of frontline staff, his major disappointment was the delays in getting USAR teams to the CTV site.
“We all hope that if something does happen in the future, we are much better prepared than last time.”