Council set to upgrade tsunami sirens
Northland Regional Council is planning to upgrade the region’s entire tsunami siren warning system.
The council has allocated $2.02 million in its draft Long-Term Plan to replace many of the sirens that are close to 15 years old.
The new ones are expected to last 20 to 30 years, will be more easily heard and less likely to be confused with fire and other alarms.
The Far North District Council (FNDC) has earmarked $79,485 for the project in its Long-Term Plan 2021-31.
Meanwhile, the 10-minute siren test traditionally conducted at the end of daylight saving will be cut to two minutes on Sunday, the FNDC saying there was no need for a prolonged test given that they were activated in response to tsunami warnings on March 5. That creates a problem for some Civil Defence volunteers, however, including in Russell, where there are three volunteers. One will be away on the weekend, leaving the other two to monitor five sirens in two minutes.
The volunteers, and others like them, maintain the sirens in place of paid staff who can’t always get to the 205 sirens throughout Northland.
The Northland Civil Defence Emergency Management (CDEM) Group, comprising Northland’s four councils, emergency services, lifeline utilities, social agencies and government departments, has overall responsibility for the sirens, which are owned and funded by the three district councils and operated in partnership with the two electricity lines companies (Northpower and Top Energy).
CDEM co-ordinates installation, maintenance and testing, and issues instructions to activate them, with the physical work carried out by Northpower and Top Energy.
Murray Soljack, from Northland Civil Defence and Emergency Management, said CDEM had been working on a plan to upgrade the siren network, using fewer sirens with a greater reach. The cost of the upgrade had been estimated at $4.5m. “Once the outcome of those (LTP) processes is known we can work on a plan for what will be a multi-year project.”