Group ECC activation

The Manawatu-Wanganui CDEM Group's Emergency Co-ordination Centre and Tararua Emergency Operations Centre were both activated for the tsunami response over the weekend. There was plenty of lead time for this event albeit with the waves first arriving reasonably early on Sunday morning. The Group response was similar to that for the Samoa event however evacuations were not recommended. All arrangements and personnel were in place to respond if evacuations were considered necessary after observations had been made at the Chatham Islands. In the end the community opted to move away from the foreshore and did so in quite an orderly fashion.

The Akitio webcam was adjusted to increase the refresh rate from about hourly to every minute. This gave us a good idea of sea conditions and whether there were people around. It's nice to actually use the camera for its intended purpose. We also kept a close eye on the GeoNet de-tided gauge (which is still showing signs of tsunami slosh today [yes that's my technical terminology]).

We did have a few problems updating the text on our webpage - but we're working on that. We also received an overwhelming number of e-mails and attachments. I think the introduction of the EMIS will go a long way to improving the sharing of information between Groups and MCDEM and minimising the number of e-mails that I'll just mark as read.

All-in-all, a much better effort on the public front this time. Still a number of operational improvements that can be made (and we're working on that). Here's an animation of wave propagation that you might like.