Kaikoura Earthquake Response – A Controller’s Perspective John Mackie, 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 '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. We prepared a briefing for Prime Minister, John Key, who was arriving at 10am. After a briefing by the Controller and EOC leads at the Museum, he attended an informal meeting with the business community in a local café where he outlined the Government’s commitment to supporting the community and advising that he would be implementing a business support package similar to the one rolled out in Christchurch in 2011, which would provide a wage subsidy for workers whose employment was effected by the earthquakes.

After this meeting the PM then proceeded to the Takahanga Marae to meet with and thank the elders, whanau and volunteers for their huge effort in providing food and shelter during the emergency to hundreds of residents and visitors.

The PMs visit coincided with the arrival of an international naval fleet comprising of the HMNZS Canterbury, Wellington, Te Kaha, Endeavour, USS Samson (Destroyer), HMAS Darwin and the HMCS Vancouver, who all contributed to the recovery through the deployment of personnel, sea sprite welfare visits to coastal communities and their air operations utilising 7 navy helicopters.

By the end of the Wednesday we had established a temporary water supply to almost half of the township, had evacuated all visitors who wanted to go onto the Canterbury (450 evacuees) and a further 160 by helicopter.

With most of the visitors gone focus then turned to establishing a reliable transport (and supply) route through the Inland Road, closing the welfare centre at the marae and implementing a sustainable temporary wastewater solution.

Bad weather on Thursday 17 November delayed plans for the Inland Road opening on Saturday, which meant that the remaining tourists hoping to use it, had little hope of driving out of Kaikoura at the weekend. A letter was prepared and hand delivered to the remaining stranded tourists that evening, actively encouraging them to hand over the keys of their rental vehicles to Police care and take the option of a Defence Force evacuation the following day. Many more took up this option which left only a very small number of tourists who decided to wait it out. Most of these tourists were traveling in their own vehicles and leaving the vehicle behind was not an attractive option for them.

While some of the local residents felt that there was too much of a focus on evacuating the tourist population, it was very important to conserve diminishing precious resources such as water, food and fuel, so that the needs of the local community could be sustained could be sustained for a longer period.

By the first weekend, there was a sustainable temporary water supply and wastewater system operating, there were good supplies of fresh food in the supermarkets, the banks had the cash machines operating in the town and the Recovery Assistance Centre was operating from the Primary School to assist people with immediate needs. The Government had implemented their wage subsidy plan for local businesses as promised, there was a sustainable fuel supply strategy operating and the plan for free local bus routes was developed. Given that, it was time to close the welfare centre at the Takahanga Marae and thank them for a job well done. They would prepare their last emergency welfare centre meal on the evening of Sunday 20 November, so they could commence their own journey to recovery.

And on the Seventh Day

There was a well-attended non-denominational church service held at 10am that Sunday morning where we gave thanks to all the community, the volunteers, all the agencies involved, the Defence Forces both NZ and foreign with a special mention and acknowledgement to Te Rūnanga o , the hapū of Ngāti o Kuri and Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu and particularly to the Trustees, whanau and volunteers of the Takahanga Marae, for their enormous effort and gracious hospitality.

On day 7 of the event another experienced Controller from Christchurch, Murray Sinclair was flown up to take over the duties in the Kaikoura EOC.

The Good and the Bad

As with all civil defence responses there is always a de-brief after the event to look at what worked well, and what didn’t go so well. There has been plenty of criticism of the Kaikoura response, which the media tend to focus on, from people affected in some way, from some within the agencies and from senior politicians. The time for proper reflection is during the formal debrief, where lessons learned and improvement initiatives can be captured and incorporated into future improvement plans. That should not distract us from some of the significant achievements in the Kaikoura response effort;

 During the Prime Minister’s visit on Wednesday 16 November, he remarked on how the response effort had ramped up significantly in the 2 days since his first visit on the Monday, giving him a lot of confidence in the response and the outstanding effort of everyone involved.  The efforts by the Takahanga Marae were exceptional, preparing up to 1,200 meals a day for displaced residents and visitors and providing emergency accommodation.  On that same day, Civil Defence (including NZDF, RNZ Navy, RNZAF and private helos) had organised what has been described as the largest air and sea evacuation in New Zealand’s history in a single day.  It is also notable that the historic visit by the USS Samson to Kaikoura, was the first visit by a US naval vessel since the ANZUS rift of the 1980s sparked by New Zealand's landmark anti- nuclear stance.  In recognition of the local Council engineers, operations staff and contractors, it was an enormous achievement to restore water supplies, a working wastewater collection system and to restore power within only a matter of days of the event. Every step in their progress was recognised by community at the daily public meetings. These great achievements also need to be recorded in the post disaster de-brief. Ironically, it was during the debrief on the Kaikoura/ Hurunui earthquake at the Commodore Hotel in Christchurch on 14 February, when we received the news that the Port Hills fire (which had started as a rural fire response in Selwyn District) had jumped the Summit Road potentially putting homes in Governor’s Bay at risk. I was to spend the next 3 weeks as Controller for that event as well. I now look forward to providing plenty of feedback at the de-brief on the fire event. Conclusion It should be remembered that Civil Defence can be defined as a framework for emergency management, it’s essentially an empty org chart with plans, processes and procedures, which is then populated mainly by appointed volunteers who move into critical roles from the their day job in the event of an emergency. Some have had formal training, some not. Most have been involved in training exercises, mostly desk-top scenarios, once or twice a year. We have to ask ourselves is this enough? One model we could consider is the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 (Japan), which reflects the importance of prior disaster risk reduction (DRR) investment, engages the principles of “Build Back Better,” and improving governance involving diverse stakeholders, all of which were emphasised by Japan from the negotiation stage of this framework. It also reinforces initiatives designed to reduce the underlying risk factors, including consideration of public/private arrangements for DRR. As New Zealand is also located on the “rim-of-fire” as Japan is, should we also be considering a professional disaster response and recovery entity that would operate within a Public/Private Sendai Framework or similar? Some say we don’t have the population to afford such an entity, but in the last two major events we have set up new infrastructure recovery agencies from scratch – SCIRT (Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Recovery Team) in response to the Christchurch earthquakes and NCTIR (North Canterbury Transport Infrastructure Recovery) in response to the Kaikoura earthquakes. Together these agencies will deliver over $4 billion in infrastructure repairs. In New Zealand, we have attempted to “Build Back Better”, but it is still largely tempered by affordability. As a final observation, it needs to be remembered that Civil Defence as we know it in New Zealand is not just the people from the Ministry or local government but it is also the Police, Fire Service, St Johns, NZDF, NZTA, CDHBs, Red Cross, local Rūnanga, Welfare agencies, community groups, walk up volunteers and international volunteers, working in a coordinated way to achieve and effective response and recovery. During some of these events I still hear senior officers in some agencies talk of Civil Defence in the third person – it demonstrates a lack of understanding how Civil Defence was intended to be operated. Our current Civil Defence and legislative arrangements may not be ideal, but it’s what we have until we come up with something better. The important message is, in an emergency, prepare to help yourself, your family and neighbours for at least 3 days. I would suggest 10 days might be better. No one knows exactly how or when a disaster will unfold or when help will come, so be prepared. Hope for the best, but plan for the worst. References Asian Disaster Recovery Centre, http://www.adrc.asia/nationinformation.php?NationCode=392 Author Biography

John Mackie is a Chartered Professional Engineer from Christchurch with a varied career mainly within the water and civil engineering sectors throughout New Zealand, with experience as a consultant, client and contractor. He is the current Chair of the Northern Branch of IPWEA, a board member of IPWEA New Zealand, SCIRT and Habitat for Humanity, Christchurch. He has also completed the CDEM Controller Development Programme (cohort 15-2, July 2015) and is a MCDEM accredited CDEM Controller. [email protected]