Lawyers called in over cyclone recovery costs
The mop-up of millions of dollars of costs incurred by the Cyclone Gabrielle response has seen disputes arise about who pays for what and has resulted in some companies calling in lawyers.
Costs of the Civil Defence Hawke’s Bay cyclone response on February 14 are the responsibility of the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council to manage and administer.
The cost of the Civil Defence response alone is expected to be about $10.7million.
The Government, in accordance with the National Civil Defence Emergency Management Plan, will fund 100% of all eligible welfare costs, such as caring for the people affected.
For other response and recovery costs the government will cover 60% of the cost, with the local council providing the other 40%.
These costs are incurred by things like precautions or preventive actions to reduce immediate danger to human life, and essential infrastructure recovery repairs.
The council recovers its costs from the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA).
The council has applied to NEMA for reimbursement of welfare costs totalling $2.5m. So far NEMA has approved 41% of these costs.
While sorting through a massive amount of invoices, forms, memos, purchase orders and other documentation compiled in the immediate aftermath of the cyclone, council staff have found there were a lot of gaps in information provided, meaning they’ve found it a real challenge to retrospectively correlate costs with activities.
A paper going to the regional council this week said that significant costs were incurred in the setting up and running of a distribution centre at the Tomoana showgrounds, and operations at the Bridge Pa aerodrome, used by numerous helicopters.
Over the course of the declared emergency the flights out of Bridge Pa were co-ordinated by Fire and Emergency NZ (FENZ).
Council staff have discovered that reimbursement for the costs of a number of these flights have been declined by NEMA.
The paper said that when the council has been declined reimbursement by NEMA it has tried to get reimbursed by the entity that used the helicopters.
Several of these entities argue that they shouldn’t have to cover the costs.
One of these entities was the Ministry of Social Development, which flew staff on several flights to visit their clients.