Tropical
Cyclone Gabrielle devastated the North Island of New Zealand in February 2023.
In business, you are accountable. Mistakes carry a penalty. People are fired for incompetence. Why is it in the parallel world of government and the public service, the reverse is the case?
So often a
government appointed inquiry head states, usually up front, “The primary object
of this inquiry is not to attribute blame for what occurred". I see this
formulation as the civil servants' outermost defence – “Oh dear, we'll have to
agree to an inquiry, but no criticising us for what went wrong.”
You would
expect honesty and integrity would be foremost in the minds of the civil
servants in question. Following a disaster as serious as Cyclone Gabrielle one
could be excused for, foolishly, presuming they would see it as their duty to
say frankly that they made mistakes and acknowledge what those mistakes were.
Such explanations might do more good than anything they had previously achieved
in their roles!
The review into
the performance of Hawkes Bay Civil Defence Emergency Management was led by
former Police Commissioner Mike Bush.
The Terms of
Reference stated -
“The
purpose of this Independent Review is to assess the operational performance
of the Hawkes Bay Civil Defence Emergency Management Group’s (the Group)1
response to Cyclone Gabrielle, with a particular emphasis on the systems and
processes; roles and responsibilities of Group members and partners;
and to what extent the implementation of pre-existing arrangements contributed
to an effective management of the response for mana whenua and the community.”
Outcome 2 “Hawke’s Bay
CDEM Group has appropriate capability and capacity to coordinate and
effectively manage a response before, during and after an emergency.”
Surely
those highlighted words confer the right for Mike Bush and his team to engage
in “finger pointing”?
It
was not long after we had picked ourselves up from Gabrielle’s impact,
collected our thoughts and for thousands of residents, started to think, “what
the bloody hell do we do now”, that, worryingly, reports began emerging of very
serious failings in communications to residents from Hawkes Bay Civil Defence.
Failures
that have led to thousands being displaced, near death situations and worst of
all, actual deaths! 11 people died in the flooding.
I
wrote, in September after the inquiry was announced –
So,
what do you think the outcome will be from this enquiry? will people be held
accountable? Will heads roll?
I
bet there will be the usual platitudes, hand wringing and profound sympathy to
families who lost loved ones. There will be words like learnings taken from the
disaster, systemic failures, systems reviews etc.
The
most critical failure seems to be when Civil Defence, via a facebook post,
reassured residents earlier that night that they didn't need to evacuate.
Talk
about providing a false sense of security? Unbelievable!
This
is the timeline of the communication debacle
–
7:28pm
Sunday 12th: The council's
principal engineer emailed the emergency operations centre a clear
warning. He stated:
The Esk river is of "serious concern" and that the river
was at 4.67 metres at 7pm and "rising fast"
The
Mangaone at Rissington is "definitely a
concern"
The
water level at Mangaone at 7pm was 8.176m, and a "red" level, or
one-in-20-year event, is 8.5 metres
It's "quite likely" to rise above the 2018 flood level
"within the next few hours."
8:33pm
Sunday 12th: Civil Defence posted on Facebook saying that
there was "no need for residents to evacuate and that those who should
move have already been contacted."
5.19am
Monday 13th: The official evacuation
order for Eskdale was made.
That Emergency text to Eskdale
residents urging evacuation was sent nine hours too late! By then, dozens of
people were already stranded on rooftops, people were already dead!
E-mails show authorities knew homes in
Rissington were at "serious risk" the day before they were inundated.
Despite this, no official evacuation order was issued! Surely, heads would roll
over that level of failure?
Unbelievably for the residents of
Rissington, no evacuation text was
ever issued. Again, despite predictions of a one-in-50-year flood event
being known by authorities the night before.
Hastings mayor Sandra Hazelhurst defended Civil Defence staff and
told Morning Report she was not appalled by the findings.
"Everybody
worked their heart out and did their best.” Is that not one of those platitudes I warned against?
Some Hawke's Bay
residents are calling for an apology from the
civil defence leaders, many are calling for their resignation!
“This review is not about
apportioning blame.” At the press conference where the final draft of the report
was made public, Hawke’s Bay Regional Council Chair Hinewai Ormsby, once again, saw fit to utter those hollow banalities!
NOT
APPORTIONING BLAME! That
is simply a cop out!
Tell that to
the residents who had livelihoods destroyed!
Tell that to
the residents that have had their homes destroyed!
Tell that to
the grieving families and loved ones of the 11 Hawkes Bay people who died!
What do you
think the family, whose daughter died after she was swept from her pregnant
mum's shoulders as they tried to reach safety, think about the “operational
performance” of senior management in civil defence? Management who still hold
their senior roles!
At 3.00am they
were desperately trying to save their lives. But it was not until 5.19 am, 9
hours after Civil Defence were
advised - “The Esk river is of "serious
concern" and that the river was at 4.67 metres at 7pm and "rising
fast!" did Civil Defence issue the
official evacuation order for Eskdale.
This
disaster must not be allowed to labelled a systems failure. This is a
management failure!
John Porter is deeply concerned about
the loss of democracy and the insidious promotion of separatism by our current
government.
5 comments:
the germans are too honest to be polite. the kiwis are too polite to be honest. make your choice!
Oh, but I think you'll find we must now consult with "tangata whenua" - after all they're at one with the environment and are experts in storm and flood management.
The incredible thing is that floods in the area have been repeatedly demonstrated over the decades.The Esk Valley was no more secret than the 1931 quake but seems to have been ignored. Was there no one left in local government with sufficent gumption to foresee the slash problem? Or do all tha observant retain observations in the hope they can market sometime as consultants?
The first 2 comments are a bit sinical but very true.
What Mr Arthur mentioned was a true problem and never should happen again.
The SLASH, burn it ( OH! Goodness, CO2 release and Jacinda would NEVER let that happen.)
There are those BIG machines able to chip it up and so give the soil some food back.
Un-economical??
YES! Most probably, But then, I do know a few more un-economicals happening.
Let all the non processed wood go to China and buy it back as processed building wood.
The other one is: the over population of bureaucrats.
The mis-information which has played a big roll in this disaster.
not apportioning blame in this instance is in total contrast to the white island incident. i guess with white island no govt departments were involved.
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