Assessing Town Basin reaction
More than 250 yachts are moored at Whangarei Marina’s Town Basin and Kissing Point facilities. Many are home to international yachties, Covid-19 refugees in New Zealand via ongoing short-term visa extensions. The Northern Advocate asked what Town Basin boaties thought of the evacuation, putting the same questions to them as they did to central city retailers. The questions were:
1. What was your preparation?
2. What was the evacuation plan?
3. How did you know about needing to evacuate?
4. Describe your routine on the day.
5. How would you score the response?
6. What worked well?
7. What needs improving?
Brian Caulton, Whangarei Marina manager (Town Basin and Kissing Point)
1. Whanga¯ rei Marina’s tsunami evacuation plan, developed from a national marinas resource to suit locally, has been developed.
2. Yachties and marina staff were evacuated by car to a range of high points until the evacuation allclear came through.
3. I heard the National Radio tsunami evacuation alerts as I drove from Whanga¯ rei Heads for a 9am work start. Next came the tsunami sirens en route. I had mistakenly left my mobile phone at home that day. I knew that as the tsunami generated from the Kermadecs, there was a little more time than if it had been generated closer to New Zealand’s coastline.
4. I got to Whanga¯ rei Marina in the Town Basin at about 9am. There hadn’t been any noticeable extra traffic flow out of town as I drove into the city centre. There were 150 boats in the Town Basin, and 109 boats at Kissing Point. I walked along the boats on the city side of the basin, telling them they needed to evacuate. I then hopped on a bike to the Parihaka side of the basin. I knocked on all the boats that I knew had people on them, telling them they needed to evacuate.
5. A, because the Town Basin emptied pretty quickly and this included businesses shutting down.
6. Everybody involved co-operated.
7. Traffic evacuation planning.
David Irvin, international yachtie and Covid-19 refugee, Whangarei Town Basin
1. Previous tsunami in the Galapagos April 1, 2014, where there was no warning system. I was having an evening drink at a local bar when the staff suddenly started packing things away and everybody rushed around. I asked what was happening and was told a tsunami was coming. I wasn’t sure whether to believe this as it was April Fool’s Day. I saw a policeman running up the street and thought that was to help the person ahead of me. “But he just kept running, past that person.”
2. Grabbed my golf clubs, and along with two other yachties went up to Maunu’s Sherwood Park Golf Club, where we played nine holes of golf then returned to the yachts.
3. Town Basin tsunami siren and mobile alerting.
4. I was just mucking around on my yacht.
5. B+, I was blown away by how everybody was so co-operative. They did what they needed to do, I was super-impressed.
6. The community’s willingness to do what they were asked to do and evacuate, in major contrast to the United States, from where Irvin originally hails.
7. Nothing much. Meanwhile, three overseas yachts anchored at Whangarei Heads on Friday headed offshore in a hurry as the morning’s tsunami evacuation alerts came through. The international yachties living on their boats were anchored at Whangarei Heads’ Urquharts Bay, but knew the safest place for them in a pending tsunami was in deep water, where the hazard’s impact is less.
They headed 25km out to sea to where the sea floor dropped to 100m below the surface east of the Hen and Chickens Islands. The boats waited there for several hours until the tsunami evacuation alert was lifted before returning.