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Hinewai Ormsby introduced the item,
acknowledging those affected by the cyclone and thanking everyone involved in
the response, and invited Mike Bush to provide an overview of the review and
its findings. Discussions covered:
·
The
Terms of Reference for the review were very clear – how do we
understand what happened and how do we improve responses to future emergency
events.
· Bush consultancy’s experienced
team dealt with a large numbers of interviews with CDEM and council staff,
governors, CDEM Controllers and team leaders.
· Large volumes of correspondence were
analysed and a public survey was undertaken with more than 1000 responses
received.
· What worked well was strong
governance and robust plans – the intent was positive.
· The severity, speed and scale of the
cyclone overwhelmed the officials involved in the response. There was a lack
of situational awareness, compounded by power and communication outages,
however mitigation should have been in place to address these.
· Civil defence officials
weren’t considering worst case scenarios. They didn’t have plans
or the capability to mitigate an event of that scale, and this lack of
capability was also evident beyond the regional level. The NEMA system is
viewed as not being fit for purpose – it sets up good people to fail.
· The review report contains nine tier
1 recommendations and 66 tier 2 recommendations – these are largely actions
that need to be taken at a regional level but also include a recommendation
that the national CDEM model is revisited.
· Solutions to some of the issues
identified are set out in the report, including a roadmap for addressing the recommendations.
· The review’s community
interaction included visits to all parts of HB. There may be have been some
uncertainty about the scope of the review and perhaps some ‘review
fatigue’ as well which contributed to some meetings not being well
attended.
· Mana whenua need to be more engaged
in the readiness and reduction aspects of civil defence; they have the capability
and coordination skills but are not always included in a response.
· A lack of communication was noted,
including the need for a shared communication platform at regional and
national level to enable timely and accurate reporting and for warnings to occur.
· Civil Defence across the country
involves specific agencies and the wider community. Bigger events require
much more coordination of the agencies, volunteers and the general public
– the responsibility for this coordination sits with the CDEM Group.
· The role of support agencies is subject
to other reviews and the HB review team has received information from those.
There needs to be more clarity about how we bring the agencies together and
who is responsible for, and in control of a response.
· A national emergency was declared
– this can complicate lines of communication and responsibilities.
Recommendations include a first principles review of the NEMA system to make
it very clear who is responsible for what during a national emergency.
· It would be practical for NEMA to
provide expertise and specialist personnel to regions during an event to
support local knowledge and networks. Currently it seems to be counter
intuitive – the more severe an event is, the more we rely on part-time
volunteers such as council staff. Support, enablement, coordination and
resources (including expert staff) should be supplied from the national level,
with local leadership.
· It would also seem practical for
NEMA to provide regions and their communities with templates, roadmaps on how
to cope during an event, and then provide support to communities through delivering
training and emergency exercises.
· Training – in line with the
review report’s recommendations, the training framework has been
reviewed and some 230 council staff have been through additional training
over the past year.
· It was suggested that independent
emergency management expertise be engaged to lead the implementation of the review
report’s recommendations. It may also be useful to have an independent
member appointed to the CDEM Group Joint Committee.
· The report clearly sets out how to
support communities at a local level so that they can help themselves during
an emergency event.
·
Transformational
change across the country is required so that communities are able to trust
CDEM in future.
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