Kaikoura Earthquake Response – a Controller's Perspective
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Kaikoura Earthquake Response – A Controller’s Perspective John Mackie, Christchurch City Council Abstract Having just dealt with the tsunami alert and the overnight evacuation of 20,000 people from coastal areas of Christchurch, following the 7.8 magnitude earthquake at two minutes past midnight on 14 November 2016, key Civil Defence personnel from Christchurch were requested to assist with the response effort in Kaikoura who had suffered severe damage as a result of the quake. This paper outlines the priorities and challenges presented to emergency personnel that were deployed to assist the community and meet their immediate needs in response to one of New Zealand's largest recorded earthquakes. The first wave of responders from Christchurch included a Controller, Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) staff including operations manager, engineering support, planning and intelligence, welfare manager and staff, building and structural engineers, who were booked to fly to Kaikoura at first light on Tuesday 15 November. In a very short space of time after arrival on Tuesday morning, the team were briefed to gain a situational awareness from the local EOC team on the extent of the known damage, emerging issues and welfare needs in the community, which they had identified over the gruelling 34 hours since the event. We understood already that there was no road or rail access to the town due to landslips and cliff collapses, but the boat harbour had been rendered almost useless due to the seismic upheaval of the coast line. One of the short term priorities was to restore a temporary water supply as it was reported that three of the town's five reservoirs were damaged and there was one day of storage remaining at normal demand. There were also around 1,000 stranded tourists who, without road egress, were putting a real strain on the scarce food and water provisions, which in turn put enormous stress on the welfare centre at the Takahanga marae. The paper talks about how the EOC worked with the emergency services, defence forces, volunteers, contractors, utility providers and the Community to develop the plan to take Kaikoura from response to recovery. Key Words Kaikoura Earthquake, Civil Defence, Controller Introduction Like most people who work in Local Government, there is usually a section in the position description that says that the employee will be required to be involved with Civil Defence or something similar. In Christchurch the clause is something like “Be associated, as required, with CIVIL DEFENCE or any exercise that might be organised in relation to this council function.” This has always been widely accepted as the general “catch-all” clause to ensure there are people available to respond in those rare events. However the reality for local government personnel in Canterbury is quite different, in that responding to emergencies has sadly become an all too frequent feature of their working lives over the last few years. This paper will offer a Controller’s perspective on the Kaikoura earthquake response from a personal point of view, but will also discuss the impacts and frequency of other emergency events and question if we as a nation, are following international best practice and ensuring we are working collaboratively to achieve the objectives of the 4 Rs of (Risk) Reduction, Readiness, Response and Recovery. Earthquake and Tsunami Event Having just returned home from an all-night shift as the Duty Controller in the Christchurch Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) after evacuating 20,000 people from New Brighton, Southshore and Sumner, I received an email at around 6.15pm on Monday, 14 November requesting Civil Defence personnel to support the Kaikoura and Huranui response teams. By 8pm I was confirmed as the relief Controller for Kaikoura and started packing for departure at first light from the Air Force Air Movements centre in Christchurch. The instructions were simply to bring a sleeping bag and no more than 10kg of baggage. The first wave of Civil Defence support personnel from Christchurch included myself as Controller, Operations Manager - Chris Gregory, Welfare Manager - Gary Watson, Welfare Team - Matt McLintock, Welfare Team - Sol Smith, Operations Team - Tim Drennan, Planning and Intel - Graham Clark, Building Evaluation - Shane Bruyns, as well as 6 building inspectors and 4 structural engineers. Kaikoura District has a resident population of around 3,500 people, with approximately 2,000 living within the township. It was estimated that there were around 1,000 tourists in the town when the earthquake struck a few minutes after midnight on 14 November, 2016. The Council has 23 full time staff, rates income of $5.8m, total revenue $8.8m and total expenditure of $9m for the 16/17 year. This is a small Council by any standard and the response to the magnitude 7.8 earthquake put enormous strain on their resources, although they coped admirably through the initial response. On arrival at the Council offices on Tuesday morning we were keen to build our situational awareness and were briefed by the local Duty Controller, Suzanne Syme and the Chief Executive, Angela Oosthuizen. At that time it had been established that there was no working wastewater system, the oxidation ponds and 2 main pump stations were damaged, the water supply was out (with 3 of 5 reservoirs damaged and out of service) with an estimated one day of drinking water remaining, half the town had no power, all road routes north, south and inland were closed with severe slips and bridge damage with no accurate estimates on when any route could be even partially open to traffic. Mobile cellular and data services were either down or unreliable, rendering the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) phones virtually useless during the first few days. However, collaboration by the Telcos meant that the offshore Vodafone cable (which fortuitously came ashore at Kaikoura for a power boost) could be used to restore a reasonable service for all providers within just a few days As the Council only that week had commenced the move into their new office building, relocation was still in progress (with dozens of box files waiting to be unpacked), IT systems were still being established and there was also some minor earthquake damage to office equipment. At that time the EOC was being run out of a single room with people working in close quarters, and it was clear that we needed to scale up quickly as more personnel and resources would be arriving over the coming hours and days. A major clean-up was undertaken by the Defence Forces and Planning and Intel developed a new floor plan providing improved working areas for Civil Defence and Emergency Services operations while still making accommodation for Council activities to continue to function. As a means of rapidly deploying email, file-sharing and diary management, Google Docs had been set up across the EOC team and was quite effective. Another extraordinary finding was the scale of the tectonic movement, when it was observed that the foreshore off the Kaikoura had risen by about 1 metre and up to 4 metres further north up the coast. This had implications for marine structures that could now only function at high tide. Some remote areas had been evacuated and there were approximately 500 people in the welfare centre established at the Takahanga Marae (who ideally can cope with 80 people). It was estimated that there were approximately 1,000 tourists stranded in Kaikoura at the time and plans were afoot to evacuate as many of these people as possible not only to get them on their forward journey, but also to reduce the demand on the local resources (water, food, fuel and accommodation). The immediate priorities were to develop a number of strategies for; Provision of temporary water supplies (Hospital, Marae, Community and Businesses) Developing temporary wastewater service Develop solid waste plan Develop reliable temporary fuel and food delivery, handling and distribution Carefully monitoring and developing public health messaging to prevent outbreaks of gastroenteritis due to the damaged water and sanitary systems Prioritise structural inspection of Takahanga Marae Develop and implement evacuation plan for up to 1000 visitors by sea and air Rapid assessments for welfare needs and building stock Ensuring welfare of EOC and Council staff who were working under extreme conditions. There was also a need to gain an oversight of what other agencies were doing to assist the community meet their basic needs including; Restoring access to cash back into the community (no EFT-POS, banks closed, job loss) Work with Mainpower on electricity restoration, to keep community informed Restoring data and voice communications (telcos). Short term objectives were to: Establish Daily calendar and rotation roster Develop a road transport solution, particularly on the Inland Road Push welfare and needs assessments to remote areas Develop a Public Information Management (PIM) strategy Exit plan for welfare centre EOC staff welfare Establish Geotech lead Plan for animal welfare Establishment of a Recovery Assistance Centre (RAC) Undertake natural hazard assessments and monitoring (landslips, rivers and dams) Compile resource requests for much needed materials, plant and goods by air, land and sea. It was also important to bring some routine back to the community and a daily calendar was established that we would repeat every day during the response phase. 0600 Dayshift starts – review latest sit rep and action plan for the day 0700 National Group Controllers conference call 0800 Incident Management Team meeting (IMT) EOC managers and emergency services 1100 Canterbury Controllers conference call 1240 PIM briefing for public meeting with Mayor (Winston Gray) and Controller 1300 Public Meeting 1400 Press conference 1500 National Group Controllers conference call 1700 Incident Management Team meeting (IMT) EOC managers and emergency services 1800 Dayshift handover Wednesday 16 November was a big day.