Questions that need to be asked post flood Auckland
I don’t care that Wayne Brown called media drongos, I care that there are hundreds if not thousands of unexpected consequences that are invisibly causing enormous harm and garnishing little attention while our City remains vulnerable to extreme weather!
As we struggle with the enormity of what the City has been hit by and the thousands of unpredicted things that are now manifesting that we haven’t thought about, we urgently need to start creating a question list as we try to work out what went wrong and how the hell we are going to work together to adapt because these extreme weather events are now here, climate change and global warming are now upon us.
QUESTIONS:
- 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?
- 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.
- 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. If Wayne Brown had declared an emergency earlier, that Comms black out would not have occurred, the Mayor must justify his position beyond, ‘I was waiting for the Bureaucracy’.
- Does the National Emergency authorities need to have power to over ride local incompetent Civil Defence Bureaucrats in a moment of natural disaster?
- We have detailed floodplain maps from 2009. Why did Auckland Council allow rapacious Developers to build on these floodplains? Who should be held responsible for allowing that?
- How do we redesign our city to be a sponge so that we can soak these future events up?
- Should small businesses have to rely on user-pays insurance and couldn’t we universalise that to provide them with a lifeline during these events? Anecdotal evidence suggests many small businesses in Auckland didn’t have any insurance.
- The poorest hit hardest by this have no contents insurance, how are we going to deal with that?
- Don’t we require far more capacity in terms of Fire, Police and Ambulance alongside specialist response welfare units for the future?
- Isn’t it time to start a cow cull because their emissions are the worst in terms of generating the very pollution that is exacerbating climate change. One cow = 14 humans in terms of shit and piss, there are 10 million cows, that’s the equivalence of 140million humans pissing and shitting into our water ways.
Auckland has been blindsided by this unprecedented weather event and we have an obligation to never let the city be this defenceless again. There were vast mistakes made everywhere and we need to be honest about that.
This can never allow ourselves to be this vulnerable again.
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I’d also like to know, how different to Auckland is the Kerikeri Emergency response protocols? After All Wayne Brown was Mayor there, wasn’t he? And if they are, shouldn’t they ,(and all Of NZ’s), be uniform? If not why not?
There is so much detail to consider in all of this.
Auckland stormwater infrastructure is 1950s level old pipes, Climate Disaster unimagined back then, impervious surfaces have multiplied with infill housing and developments, privatised water services basically ban rain water collection–if every dwelling had a rain water tank–which could be used for gardens, car washing etc. if people are too freaked to drink it, that would take millions of litres out of the equation.
Major upgrades are required, and although it seems unrelated–major reductions in dairy cattle numbers.
“Sponge Cities” have to be a better option than flooded fuck up cities!
I agree with much of what you pose: there are some reasonable questions that warrant answers. But there’s another important one that you’ve missed, along with the entire body of press and all opposition mp’s.
You say: “If Wayne Brown had declared an emergency earlier, that Comms black out would not have occurred…” The minister (McAnulty) could have unilaterally declared a state of local emergency at any time prior to Brown declaring, it’s disingenuous of him to pretend it depended on Brown. The minister has the power under Sec 69 of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002: “If at any time it appears to the Minister that an emergency has occurred or may occur in the area of any Civil Defence Emergency Management Group and a state of local emergency has not been declared under section 68, the Minister may declare a state of local emergency for that area.” It’s black and white, plain and simple.
So further questions are: why did McAnulty sit on his hands doing nothing? Why didn’t McAnulty declare an emergency? Why did McAnulty pretend everyone had to wait on Brown, when that’s not true? Was McAnulty ignorant of his own power to declare, or was he prepared to watch Auckland wash away if it also undermined a political opponent? How come Brown gets a Go-straight-to jail card for procrastination while McAnulty receives a Get-out-of-jail-free; they’re both guilty, if that’s the right word, of exactly the same thing?
The lunacy of ‘globalised’ trade policy already destroyed most of the economy. Attacking large agricultural production will kill off the last major export, ensuring the country forever remains a pathetic rural backwater with no money.
A progressive government must act to protect jobs. The government must build infrastructure schemes and fund the use of new techniques, to ensure pollution does not put farmers out of work (or workers in industry).
Auckland received about 20% of its annual rainfaill in 6 hours – there is no urban design that can be retrofitted to Auckland reasonably that would have soaked that up. Infrastructure is sized for AEPs – i.e. 100 year flood events. The best we can do is incrementally improve infrastructure, urban design and support.
It’s all Phil Goff and Len Browns fault. Wayne trying to clean up the mess.
Excellent points you raised Martyn.
As a post quake Eastern suburbs flood zone dweller in Christchurch I feel Aucklanders pain, fear, depression, anger and uncertainty at this time.
My heart goes out to all affected up there.
With you in spirit folks…hang in there
It’s not Big Farmers fault people build cities made of concrete and asphalt on low lying flat ground.
But it is medieval human nature to start sacrificing animals to change the weather.