HB deployment

So the pace in the EOC changed today with CHB staff coming back on.  Any transition comes with some disruption but by mid morning we were in the groove.  By days end we had some team successes. 

While lots of roads and bridges are pretty buggered, CHBs upper catchment is sheep and beef pastoral nestled under the Ruahine ranges. The evidence shows a distinct lack of tree debris in CHB compared with northern catchments. The feeling is that this played a major factor in many bridges remaining intact. In fact a distinctive feature of the washouts is not that the bridges  failed but that either one of the approaches was scoured out to the point of total failure. This suggests sheer water volume and velocity rather than debris flow. 

Another fun fact is that the Waipawa river changed course, from its original alignment, to its current course during a 1868 flood (Wikipedia). So with the intensity of the Gabrielle rain (750mm over 24 hours), it isn’t surprising that it wanted to revert to its original course. Or it could just be that the river remembered  where it used to go (water memory).

Having bonded in the morning I then found out about Big Bertha. Not the Bertha from the Waipuk Leopard hotel, but a much less inspiring and equally voluminous water pump.  Big Bertha handles any stormwater overflow into the Waipukurau wastewater treatment plant.  And on the very day that more rain was forecast she sadly decided to crap out (pun not intended). After being craned out we received a request to bring in a mobile pump as a contingency. There was some confusion and urgency so controller escalation triggered a response. The airforce was probably keenly gearing up for an NH90 sling load but we’ll never know as the 3 waters team found out their contractor had given them some wrong intel. Pump 3 was back on line, Big Bertha was in for an overhaul and the cows downstream of the sewerage ponds could sleep easy in the Knowledge their paddocks wouldn’t be covered in Waipuk leftovers. 

The other excitement of the day (apart from establishing a tasks log) were some rogue trucker road runners who were busting a weight limit on one of the bridges. The bridge has been compromised in the flood and the roading crew had real concerns that as a critical asset, it could let go under heavy loads. Which would mean a years detour, a costly rebuild and one very embarrassed trucker. With the controllers approval we mobilised and in a few minutes hatched a plan. The road crew would place chicane bollards to let light vehicles through, Intel would call all the trucking firms to reinforce the message, Public Information Management (PIM) would put out comms, and Logistics would procure a motion capture camera to mount on the nearby pub as evidence if the worst did happen.  The publican was most cooperative having already turned away some heavies - perhaps motivated by the loss of a years worth of customers if the bridge failed.  Ops coordinated and we thought that in the spirit of teamwork it was only fair that Welfare could handle the traumatised truckers who had to detour an extra hour or so.  True teamwork across council staff some of who, 6 hours ago, had never met.  Groove or rhythm, today felt like we had it. 

Blue line (above) is the original Waipawa river bed that flowed again after Gabrielle breached the stop bank and realigned the river (taking out roads and bridges), light blue is a lake that developed in cropping land. Some houses in the lake had water to their roof level. Below looking towards the breach.

Images below (and top of blog) taken just below the breach.

HB deployment

After a relatively quiet Sunday and another field orientation our surge team is feeling in the groove now. The CDEM people call this “rhythm” which changes depending on the event and response.

Many of us involved in the COVID emergency response will know what I mean which I say “long covid”.  In Waipa we had  2 full CDEM shifts working over several several weeks during COVID lock down 1.  It was a slow grind rhythm and an emergency of a very different kind with our focus on rolling welfare needs (food, medicine and medical needs) for those in isolation.

The recent Auckland Anniversary event in Waitomo was a short response lasting a few days. Very necessary for a rapid response to help the households that flooded, then quickly de-escalated as the scale was small and water receded quickly.

Gabrielle is different again for different parts of the Hawkes Bay, and the country. The phase 1  rapid response and urgent need for saving lives has passed and in our area we have moved into phase 2 supporting some minor isolated communities and the next phase of planning for recovery.

For Central Hawkes Bay (CHB) at least, we are still in an emergency but also partly returning back to BAU. This is important for a sense of normalcy and also so a small council with limited capacity for a long stretch can change gear.

This is also a delicate space as most people go about daily lives in the sun only inconvenienced by road closures, while others (luckily not many in this district) remain displaced from their homes. It’s this period that we start seeing community division, frustrations and a handful of people challenging any form of authority, either because they are affected and don’t understand the recovery will take time and start feeling the strain,  or they are unaffected personally and feel a sense of entitlement to exercise their rights e.g. to drive on closed roads.

There was some looting here early on with rural properties being burgled, during the emergency response, while farmers had to vacate their houses from roofs due to the Waipawa River busting a stop bank and literally changing course, to where it used to flow. Whatever the motivation to kick people when they are down this group was caught. So now comms, messaging and local leadership will become just as important as diggers and orange jackets.

Hawkes Bay compromised roads.  Central Hawkes Bay is the light shade. She’s a pretty big job…

The following series shows the breach of the Waipawa river stop bank above Waipawa town.  This and several other breaches caused wet carpets in half the town, and  downstream where the river changes its course, wet roofs in a couple of houses, roads and bridges washed out and a new lake where there was once cropping. As heard yesterday “river flats are fertile for a reason”…

And the cause of the breach…this bridge and the railway line survived, largely due to CHB having the land stability of the Ruahine ranges rather than forestry in the upper catchments.

HB deployment 25 feb

 Our team of 23 is made up of a wide range of mostly council staff plus one from NEMA.  They do a mix of day jobs, a few full time CDEM staff with other staff having day jobs covering planning, administration, events, management, PR/comms, data analysis. We also have rural outreach personnel who are not council staff and true volunteers in that they are not being paid for their deployment.

 Our surge team comes from Palmerston North, New Plymouth, South Taranaki, Wellington, Hamilton, Cambridge, Christchurch, South Canterbury, Invercargill, Blenheim, Rotorua and Timaru, men and women ranging from enthusiastic young folks to those who have been around a little longer.  This is the strength of Local Government, we all understand pubic service and most have varying levels of training in CDEM “Coordinated Incident Management System”. 

As expected, the logistics of moving a diverse group of people from around the country isn’t easy. By breakfast at Whenuapai we had gotten to know each other fairly well even if we hadn’t quite remembered  everyone’s names. Thanks to the cooks and staff at Wheneuapai who organised to put us up and fed us with about 20 minutes notice. The weather cleared and we were able to hitch a ride on  the 2 “baby hercs” to Napier, with a pretty smooth run arriving midday. From there the aircraft relocated police staff back to Christchurch. 

  On the ground there was some confusion over who was going to which centre after a few of us received different info, and it turned out we were being split into 3 groups. I was in a group of 4 being redeployed to Central Hawkes Bay District Council Emergency Operations Centre in Waipawa.  A motel sounded a bit more comfy than the HMNZS Canterbury and there were rumours of COVID doing the rounds on the ship, poor (no) cell reception inside, and trying to move people off the ship.  In the circumstances we were quietly not disappointed about the redeployment. 

The 2 other groups were going to Hastings EOC and the regional Emergency Coordination Centre. After some further transportation confusion, our personal transportation arrived in 2 vehicles. South Africans Amanda and “hubby” Jan (“yarn”) were local volunteers, not involved in civil defence. The kind of folks who organise a community fundraising while coaching the kids sports teams, working at the Lions op shop and baking for the elderly.  Amanda had registered them as volunteers, and Jan had been doing long hours on a Chorus broadband contract starting on the fibre rebuild.  And when they described rebuild, it was literally from scratch in many places. And on his day off he was volunteering as a civil defence driver, in is own ute paying for his own fuel.  It’s this spirit that you see again and again in tough times with people pitching in.

We finally arrived at the EOC to find heavy rain. After a thorough briefing and set up, I was invited out for eyes on some local infrastructure. I was estatic to find my warehouse high viz rain jacket (hastily bought at the Rotorua 660 concert when we realised we hadn’t packed for the heaving rain) matched almost exactly the high viz of the local engineers. My matching orange coat made me now feel like a real operations member. And being a small council that just gets on with stuff,  I also found out that ops manager and ops team are one and the same. With some possible intelligence thrown in, I was feeling quite at home. A whistle stop drive  around the local rivers and roads showed elevated levels and minor surface flooding but thankfully no significant new issues from the rain, with the stopbank repairs and bunding for the Waipawa bore water supply pump holding up well.  The issues from the cyclone are a complete other story… 

Unloading supplies for up the coast. My back pack almost ended up with them, luckily recovered as they were closing up the ute with my pack amongst the supplies. 

Police awaiting their lift to Christchurch.

HB deployment 24 Feb 1800

 Whenuapai, 6pm. Local weather hasn’t played nicely, our trip down is cancelled tonight due to an intense thunderstorm.  The latest plan is to head out at 9 and 10 tomorrow morning  on 2 flights in C27 Spartans to Napier, after bunking down in Wheunapai.  The Aussey C27 planes and crew have hopped over to help out and a few days ago - fun fact - their C27 was the most watched aircraft in the world on flight radar 24 as they did recce doughnuts over Hawkes Bay.  Still, my multi tool with pocket knife made it through baggage check.  

Note for future reference BYO earplugs not necessary at Whenuapai waiting lounge - they have their own ear plug dispenser. 

Hawkes Bay deployment

 So having put my name down on the national civil defence “surge” support list after cyclone Gabrielle, I had a call up on Thursday.  Actually two call ups, the first was for ops manager which I accepted then a short time later a call for intelligence manager. Someone hadn’t updated the spreadsheet!!  Other than that, the comms and coordination from the NEMA/NCC (national coordination centre) logistics team has been great. 

I’ll try to do an update every day but depends on connectivity and workload.  Come this evening myself and around 21 other surge personnel should be in Napier, hosted by our friends on the HMNZS Canterbury for start of work tomorrow.  Not sure what to expect on the ground but pleased to be able to help out, and thanks to my family and management and my team Waipa District Council for supporting my deployment.