Well, well, well.
What do we have here?
A damning review into the fatal Auckland Anniversary weekend floods has found a “system failure” of leadership in the first 12 hours of the response in which “much of the damage was done” before Auckland Council or Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown had taken any action.
The review, commissioned by the mayor three days after the record-breaking downpour on January 27, was undertaken by former police commissioner Mike Bush and delivered yesterday in a press conference at Auckland Council’s city centre headquarters.
However, despite a central finding of the report being “senior leaders underestimated the importance of their visible leadership roles”, Brown did not appear to answer questions.
EXACTLY what TDB alleged on day 1 of the extraordinary flooding, gross incompetence!
The person left in charge to make the decision was imported to the job after building playgrounds for the council FFS!
The Boomer King says he followed the process that needs be followed in this and waited until the emergency management centre made the call, which is absolutely true, but the nature of that relationship is supposed to be the Mayor on the line demanding that response, not just waiting around for someone from the emergency management centre to call him or read it on Twitter!
The timeline is clear.
I spoke with sources who were on the Friday morning phone call assessing the rain warning and they told me no sense of emergency was being sensed in the Metservice reports, and that some Civil Defence staff were already out the door by midday for the long weekend. As the rain built, many of those staff were unhappy and grumpy about being called back to the office.
By 4pm on Friday it was becoming increasingly obvious an emergency event was occuring, however the Auckland City Civil Defence Bureaucracy alongside the Mayor were spending more energy behind the scenes defending their inaction than preparing for what was to come.
By 6pm the enormity of what was happening was attracting the attention of national emergency authorities while the Police, Fire and Ambulance services were already becoming stretched.
As the fight behind the scenes between the Mayors Office, the Civil Defence Auckland Staff and the national emergency authorities continued there was no communication whatsoever from the Authorities telling Aucklanders in their time of need what to do.
By 9pm we had the extraordinary situation where Auckland MPs were taking to Twitter begging the Mayor to declare a state of emergency.
Between 6.14pm and 10.18pm when the Emergency Declaration was finally made public, there was no one leading Auckland during the worst weather disaster on record. I’m not asking Wayne Brown to stop the rain, I’m demanding that he be held accountable for the total lack of communication during those 4 hours when Aucklanders had no idea what to do!
Because NZ is a cheap country, our civil defence funding has been reduced to a messaging system to tell people what to do, that messaging system was utterly missing when Auckland needed it most.
The following press conferences where Wayne’s only concern was to defend his own incompetence and inaction were a slap in the face to every Aucklander.
I think NZ became so used to Jacinda reacting effortlessly in a crisis that we forgot how difficult leadership is and why when we vote it matters
The Mayors incompetence in the face of the worst weather event in Aucklands history demands reflection from us the voters.
It was clear Wayne Brown was very very very old during the debates and lacked the real qualities of leadership Auckland required.
Our rigged Mayoral Election System is designed to be as cheap as possible and is subcontracted out to a private company who only has a dozen polling booths for a city of 1.7million in what is the must successful voter suppression scam of all time.
Wayne Brown won with a pittance of the voting population actually voting and he was elected by reactionary right wing self interest boomers who are now very quiet.
Efeso Collins sure as hell wouldn’t have waited until 10.30pm to declare an emergency but unfortunately Auckland will vote for a candidate called Brown, they won’t vote for a candidate who is Brown.
If you want to be angry, be angry at yourselves, be angry we elected a fool, be angry that we haven’t taken climate change seriously, be angry that your 7pm Current Affairs shows are shallow circus’s that don’t focus on the real issues.
This unprecedented weather event must be an inflection point to our political apathy and refusal to take climate change seriously.
- The Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2022 stipulates the Local Civil Defence Emergency Management Groups (CDEMG) bear responsibility for coordinating Auckland‘s emergency response, but it is not clear who was appointed the ‘Group Controller’ of this event and the Civil Defence Staff who did front had only been appointed last year and was previously responsible for building children’s playgrounds!
- Metservice receives over $20million each year from the Ministry of Transport for public safety forecasting services, but they also have a side hustle called ‘MetOcean Solutions’, where they provide detailed marine weather forecasting for their corporate clients. Is there a difference between the open source forecasting they provide the public and the far more detailed one they provide corporate clients, and if so does that need investigating?
- Should small businesses have to rely on user-pays insurance to fund their recovery from natural disasters. We have #EQC for collectively-funded earthquake insurance, why not replicate or extend that to cover other kinds of natural disasters? This would go a long way towards both universal coverage, and avoiding unpredictable spikes in user-pays insurance premiums?
- Have the decades of avoiding the reality of climate change and allowing developers to build on floodplains destroyed any faith Auckland City can get its shit together when the current Council is looking at cutting 1000 bus rides a day and eroding climate change mitigation programs.
Our infrastructure can’t cope with what its coming, our economy can’t cope with what is coming and our communities can’t cope with what is coming.
We must urgently understand the need for climate change adaptation and what that must mean for us all.
Welcome to your future, stop being angry and get involved.
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I would bet that Leo Malloy would have been a better mayor. Cause he at least likes Auckland and it’s inhabitants, unlike Wayne Brown.
When did any Auckland council ever declare an emergency? It is plain to see no one knew what to do or what they were dealing with!
The only thing I’m angry about is repeated councils failures to do the basics and maintain the storm water system, you know, clean drains out, ensure streams were/are clear. I saw first hand just how effective this is, if they do it.
And if it’s all Wayne Browns fault, which it isn’t, then why is the predominant left of the last 4 Auckland Councils councillors not sacked? Where were they in ensuring infrastructure was up to speed? Where? Simple showers had roads flooding around my way purely down to a lack of maintenance prior to that Anniversary Day downpour, so how anything was ever going to cope with worse is a mystery, known only to them. And don’t get started on pip squeak mayoral aspirant’s tweeting messages not to go out in the rain in your socks, type bullshit. God, we needed that like a cup of cold sick, Richard!
Mike Bush, to me, is coming across as a leader of police, what an emergency response reaction should have been, not a city council. I do not expect any council to be that emergency response, but I do expect them to minimise the chance of floods hapoening, something they failed to do!
This situation has been building for years as Auckland’s population increased. A deadly storm indeed…pun intended…
–infill housing, housing in gullies and low levels, more multi level dwellings okayed–stack ’em & rack ’em, too many impervious surfaces, rain water collection tanks not promoted or permitted, storm water system maintenance patchy
The political factors;
–declining public participation in local govt and community affairs generally
–low voter turnout, postal voting, transience, rise in renters
–a right wing idiot, surrounded by Natzo functionaries and suck ups, elected as Mayor by a tiny minority of Aucklanders, Browny is incompetent and a literal danger to Aucklanders as this event proved
And the biggie–CLIMATE fucking CHANGE is real
It is pathetic to see the usual tory suspects above diverting and wanking on–nasssty critics of our beloved Mayor, we hates you!!–as Daily Blog Editor Martyn says, “Welcome to your future, stop being angry and get involved.”
Well said Tiger and 100%
Phil Goff council executive was equally to blame for not having proper civil defense emergency proactive process.
And once again Boomer Brown refuses to front up publicly or step up and acknowledge his failure this report has highlighted.
Instead he gives the excuse that it was previous budget cuts that caused the failure.
This all coming from a Mayor that has manufactured a “fiscal crisis” in order to justify massive budget cut across the board!
Brown is an incompetent ego driven bafoon, who has realised he doesn’t have the skill to front up to the media or his constituents.
Instead he hides in his office, pisses ratepayer money away on team of highly paid consultants to assist him in avoiding his Civic responsibilities.
Angry Grandpa won’t go down in history as the man that fixed Auckland, he’ll only be remembered as the sad old man that left a big Brown stain on the City.
He should be removed from office due to his incompetence
Brown does not need to speak up his PR man Bob says it in three words…” fuck off media”
Pity he also says “ fuck of Aucklanders”
Personally, I think the wrong people are being blamed. It’s the rate payers that are at fault here. You all wanted lower rates, so here you go, now you have what you wanted, fucked infrastructure, underinvestment in council workers and skillsets, and private industry rorting the the rotted system. Congrats.
This from today’s Herald
“Brown took and made a number of phone calls and forwarded emails to his chief of staff.
The documents show he was having problems with his work iPad and wanted it fixed, but the on-duty IT person was dealing with their own flooded home.
Eventually, someone else was called in but it appeared the mayor’s iPad was out of action for at least an hour.”
So while the city was flooding and the masses were in desperate need of information about where to seek shelter….”Mr Fixit” was having a classic Boomer moment of not being able to turn his iPad on!
Sums up Angry Grandpa’s capabilities to a tee!
Out of his depth and totally incompetent.
Wonder if his Grandchildren are now on the Mayoral Office payroll as IT consultants now!
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