What have we learned from the Auckland floods?

Every Aucklander has a story from January 27, 2023. Some were braving the chaotic holiday traffic leading into Auckland Anniversary weekend but being stonewalled by flooded motorways. Some were among the thousands of revellers escaping from the Elton John concert that never was.

Or worse, some were swimming, kayaking or boating away from their soggy homes. All were experiencing the wettest day in the city’s history.

But what if a flood of that magnitude were to happen again? What’s changed to prevent such widespread damage? The short answer in some cases is: nothing.

A year on from that fateful day, which left four dead, Nick Vigar, head of planning for Auckland Council’s Healthy Waters department, says should the city suffer a similar weather event, it would likely swamp thousands of homes and businesses again. Fifty-thousand to be exact. That’s the number of properties lying in overland flow paths and flood plains. There is simply nowhere for the water to go.

A buyout process on 700 of those homes in the flood plains could take months, years or even a decade, depending on the house. And most residents don’t have the luxury of abandoning ship to build or buy a new property on higher ground while they wait for the money to come in.

There are 12 major projects under way across the city, funded with the help of a $800 million recovery programme, that are similar to a redevelopment in Northcote that kept much of the suburb’s homes and its town centre dry on January 27.

The Greenslade Reserve sports field drained 12 million litres of floodwater in just a matter of hours during the storm. It is part of a Ka¯inga Ora redevelopment that built 1700 new homes but also “daylighted” stormwater pipes so the water ran through an improved Awataha Stream and “green” pathway of plants and lawns rather than pipes. But the new projects could be years away.

There have been other, quicker fixes in the works that may not save those 50,000 homes but could at least warn residents to get to higher ground. It all comes down to communication and what lessons have been learned from the lack of it on January 27.

The disconnect between every level of executive management from the various authorities involved in the emergency response that night was striking.

Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown was accused of being too slow to react to the seriousness of the storm.

Neither Brown nor his staff were on the AKGEOC (Auckland Civil Defence and Emergency Management Team) email distribution list so were not receiving crucial updates.

Mayoral staff were understood to be “screaming” at their computers searching for internally sent email alerts and updates.

And in an investigation by Tom Dillane, published today, the mayor claims no one from Auckland Emergency Management (AEM) phoned him — that no one in the team even had his number.

A damning review of the floods conducted by former police commissioner Mike Bush found a “system failure” of leadership in the first 12 hours of the response in which “much of the damage was done” before council or Brown had taken any action. A key finding was that “senior leaders underestimated the importance of their visible leadership roles”.

The comms from Fire and Emergency NZ (Fenz) and AEM to the mayor were lacking. The mayor was lacking in not being more demanding in seeking it out. Of demanding it on the night.

The mayor has largely maintained he was blameless on the night but did, however, offer this small concession in today’s story: “Let’s hope we all learn to do better next time, me included.”

The council has said it has now set up an improved standard operating procedure that on-duty staff and leaders can follow if they find themselves in unexpected emergencies, thus speeding up council’s response.

And council CEO Phil Wilson, who was in the mayor’s office on the night of the floods, is confident the logistical process that led to a delayed declaration of a state of emergency would no longer exist if a weather event of similar magnitude were to happen today.

” . . . I think at the time, what we failed to appreciate was the importance of declaration [of a state of emergency] for the purposes of communicating the severity of this to the community and its symbolic value,” says Wilson.

“We would handle it differently now and have different operating procedures for that as a direct consequence of that, and the advice to the mayor would be different.”

With an “upper tropospheric cyclonic vortex” forecast to arrive on our shores by early next week, and Tropical Cyclone Kirrily declared off Australia’s east coast, the threat of extreme weather in the Pacific is obviously not going away.