Trouble brewing
Warnings in a report this week on the country’s preparedness for severe weather events had a familiar ring about them, writes Phil Pennington
Emergency authorities are warning that Cyclone Gabrielle rates as only a “moderate” natural disaster, and that much worse lies ahead. Yet the storm 14 months ago left the country’s emergency response system in tatters, despite years of reviews and efforts to make laws and systems that deliver for people in harm’s way.
The many inquiries since, such as the one released on Tuesday, are finding more gaps and adding to an already very long “to-do” list, at a time when central government and council resources are short.
“While devastating to the communities involved, Cyclone Gabrielle can be considered as a moderatescale event when compared to what New Zealand could experience,” the National Emergency Management Agency (Nema) said in a briefing to the incoming minister last November.
“As seen with recent severe weather events, the emergency management system can be easily overwhelmed with a moderate-scale event.”
There are now at least 26 inquiries into how it was “easily overwhelmed”, by cyclones Gabrielle and Hale, and by the Auckland Anniversary floods.
Most of these are by consultants working for Civil Defence and critical industries like telecoms. A glance through just 10 of the inquiries counts 600 pages of findings and advice, and more than 120 recommendations.
Many of them echo similar findings and advice from 2017, 2020 and other past reviews into emergency response shortcomings.
‘We’ve run out of time’
To avoid another repeat, the biggest burden falls on Emergency Management Minister Mark Mitchell.
He said on Tuesday he would consider all the reports and “make further decisions in the next few months”.
You can compare what he went on to say on Tuesday with what his predecessor, Labour’s Kieran McAnulty, told RNZ last year about fixing the emergency response system:
McAnulty, June 2023: “It is important that we take the time needed to get this right”.
Mitchell, April 2024: “I want to take the time to get this right”.
Mitchell told RNZ on Wednesday: “We’ve run out of time. We have to get this done and we’re going to do that.”
However, the country’s track record is poor, it is going backwards in scrapping a law change that took years of work, resources are stretched and vital technology is outdated or missing.
Inadequate technology and intelligence infrastructure
The inquiry report released on Tuesday found three big technology holes: on the warning systems for local people; in how responders share a “common operating picture” of what is happening; and in the 111 system to call for help.
The holes have been known for years but recommendations to fix them have been ditched.
Compare this with the 2017 ministerial review, another 2020 inquiry, and from this week:
2017: “New Zealand’s intelligence infrastructure and hardware has been inadequate in recent emergencies, although agencies individually have a lot of capability to draw on. Recent advances in technology could help provide better intelligence.”
2020: A review of Napier floods called the lack of a common operating platform “a missing link” that caused “significant frustrations”. It got its own two-page section in a 42-page report on how to fix this.
2024: “Without a common operating picture, information had to be repeatedly requested rather than being provided automatically . . . The inquiry strongly recommends the Government invest in a common operating platform.”
The second hole is less obvious. The country does have a shared warning system, which has been routinely upgraded, in which smartphones get pinged with alerts. But a lot of people told the latest inquiry they did not get alerted, and Tuesday’s report said: “A comprehensive warning system is needed that is flexible enough to cover most, if not all, natural hazards.”
The third tech hole is the antiquated 111 system.
But the inquiry’s recommendation on that, for a “comprehensive review”, is out of date. Report after report has already found the 111 tech is old, slow and fragmented — the most graphic of which a year ago, from police, gave examples to the previous Government of how it was causing deaths and injuries.
Lawmakers were just about to hit the button on replacing the 111 (or Card) system last year when they pulled back because of the cost.
They chose instead to upgrade just one part of emergency communications, the Public Safety Network (an ongoing build now itself suffering delays), rather than this and Card.
Two months ago Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said, “I know the minister’s all over it,” regarding 111’s problems.
On Tuesday, Mitchell said emergency responses worked well this year at the Westland floods and the
Christchurch Port Hills fire.
However, these were small-scale, not “moderate” events, and the fire was a repeat scenario, while the West Coast is not representative of much larger, less cohesive communities, and how they respond to a disaster.
Resource shortfalls
New South Wales had its own long to-do list after extreme floods two years ago. Quickly, the state government put more than $200 million into new rescue boats, high-clearance trucks and 2300 more trained rescuers.
In New Zealand, the 2017 review looked across the Tasman for lessons: “We looked for best practice in the emergency management systems of other jurisdictions — Australia, United Kingdom, United States and Canada”.
This week’s inquiry did not do that.
Mitchell, asked by RNZ on Wednesday how the Government could afford the to-do list, said: “Yes, we’ve got arcane infrastructure that needs investment and we committed to doing that, but we have to do that in a measured and a wellplanned way because obviously we’re in a position at the moment as a country where we’ve been living well beyond our means.”
The minister was told in November 2023’s briefing from Nema: “In some cases, there may not be the capacity to fully respond to and recover from a moderate or even small-scale event.”
Additionally, it was “very likely we will experience two or more concurrent major events. This will lead to long and overlapping recoveries”.
Nema’s latest annual review lists a series of delayed projects, and shows that while $130m was budgeted for a large range of emergency management support funding it managed to spend only about $80m of that (with $30m carried forward to this year).
The agency runs on $39m a year, and is part of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, which must find 6.5 per cent savings under the government-ordered public sector cost-cutting moves.
Nema did not set up its Cyclone Recovery Unit till late in the financial year, so underspent by $1.2m out of a $2.9m budget.
Fire and Emergency, by contrast with Nema, has a $700m-plus budget.
But its review last week found it lacked the equipment, training, and preparedness in the face of Gabrielle and the Auckland floods. Fenz suggested it might bring in fixes — though its review is full of roundabout language and uses “may” a lot.
Law to-and-fro
The 2017 review called for: “Strengthening the application of current legislation, consistent with the intent of the CDEM Act, together with some changes to allow stronger nationallevel direction and regulation”.
In 2024, the country was going backwards to go forwards, the Government argued.
One bill has been ditched, another is still in play, and critical infrastructure that could reduce the damage from disasters continues to be very vulnerable.
The Nema briefing to Mitchell in November said: “The relative vulnerability of people, property and infrastructure is growing”.
It took the previous Government six years from 2017 to get a bill ready that it said reflected the experience of going through disasters.
It was due to be tabled in Parliament the week Gabrielle hit. It never landed and now the new Government has scrapped the bill, saying it did not go far enough.
A second piece of legislation is still alive. It revolves around what the industry must do to improve resilience.
It is early days, however. The telecommunications industry had its first joint meeting on this last week — to plan for further meetings. The industry had opposed parts of the other dumped bill, for requiring unachievable assessments of their systems in the face of any disaster that might hit.
The legislative reset might put the two bills on the same track, a relief to telcos.
The upcoming Budget in May will indicate what the Government’s priorities are, beyond changing the law.