Green RIG whereabouts

Many of you will know that the award winning Green RIG spends its time on the road educating our communities about environmental issues. In the recent theme change natural hazards have become more of a talking point. One wall of the Green RIG is dedicated to natural hazards.

The photo shows students learning about the effects of development in flood plains... something we know a little bit about.

The Green RIG team publish a calendar on the Green RIG website here. Over the next couple of months, the Green RIG will be in Palmerston North, Carterton and Wanganui.

Get Ready Week... underway already

OK, so we're a bit early... that's typical of us though!

This year's theme for Get Ready Week (formerly known as Disaster Awareness Week) is tsunami. That fits nicely with the national tsunami exercise on the 20th October. New banners have been made for our AirShelter and a CDEM Group tsunami brochure prepared and printed. We've bought survival items to display in the AirShelter and have the new video interviews with Kiwis who survived the Samoa earthquake and tsunami last year.

Next thing you know, Canterbury have a massive earthquake and a significant civil defence response. Closer to home, we have more than our fair share of rain resulting in evacuations, flood gate operations and an awful lot of soggy ground! We've now operated the new Makino and Moutoa flood control gates twice in two weeks. I think its a good guess that people will have questions about earthquakes and floods while we are out there in the community.

To help answer some of the questions, we dusted off the earthquake cubes from a couple of years ago. Each cube in the display (numbered 4-8) represents the amount of energy released in an earthquake. The very small cube represents a Richter scale 4 event and the big cube a Richter scale 8. We'll also be printing off some more Makino brochures for the Fielding display.

The Get Ready Week roadshow is in the following places...

5-7 October Levin at Horowhenua District Council

8 October Feilding in the Square

11 October Taihape New World

12 October Marton New World and Ohakune District Council Service Centre

13 October Palmerston North in the Square

14 October Danevirke at the Warehouse

15 October Wanganui as part of the Health Wellbeing and Fitness expo at the Memorial Hall

Not ready to get thru

The Minister has issued a media release today...

Despite the death and destruction caused by the massive earthquakes in Haiti and Chile this year, most New Zealanders are still complacent about preparing for such an event here, Minister of Civil Defence John Carter said today.

Statistics released today – the New Zealand General Social Survey 2008 fact sheet on preparedness for natural disasters – show that just 15 percent of households are well prepared for a natural disaster with enough food and water stored to last three days and an emergency plan.

“Last weekend, while authorities were preparing for a tsunami in the wake of the Chile earthquake, some New Zealanders were still not taking the situation seriously or heeding the warnings,” Mr Carter says.

“Most people realise these warnings are not issued lightly though and went to seek out information. There were 44,000 visitors to the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management’s website www.civildefence.govt.nz on Sunday. But leaving it until the day of a disaster might be too late.

“New Zealand is vulnerable to unpredictable natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunami, as well as weather related emergencies. People need to know what this means and that they won’t always get a warning.

“While we have excellent civil defence emergency planning, as we witnessed last weekend, how well prepared communities and individuals are is what will make the difference on the day there is an emergency situation.

“There will be a period of time when households and communities might be isolated and without essential services. There may be massive infrastructure damage taking out roads, airports, rail tracks, power, telecommunications and water.

“We are also geographically isolated from our nearest neighbours on whom we might call for help, so any international emergency response might take days.

“Every household needs to have a plan for this eventuality. Get your family or household together and agree on a plan. This includes knowing where to shelter in an earthquake, flood or storm; knowing where you will all meet up during and after a disaster; and knowing where you have emergency survival items stored.

"Every household also needs to be prepared for evacuation with a basic getaway kit.

“Perhaps also get the household together and research what happens when a major earthquake occurs and what a tsunami is. On Sunday people were quoted as saying they would run if a tsunami hit but of course, you cannot run as fast as a tsunami surge.”

The fact sheet is available at:

http://www.stats.govt.nz/Publications/SocialConditions/natural-disaster-preparation-at-home-factsheet

Emergency and armed services open day

On Saturday the 20th, the combined emergency and armed services open day was held at Manfield in Feilding. This was an excellent opportunity for the services to demonstrate their capability to the public for free.

Displays by Police, Fire, St John, Air Force, Army, Coastguard, Helipro and the Square Trust rescue helicopter, PNCC civil defence, neighbourhood support and the CDEM Group made it an interesting collection of capabilities and 'toys' to look at. A variety of central demonstrations were also carried out in the middle of the arena during the day.

The PNCC team focus was on their REST capability and survival items whereas the Group's airshelter display was adapted to present flood protection works for the Makino Stream in Feilding. Evan Lloyd is pictured discussing the Makino Diversion Structure with a local resident.

A huge congratulations to the organising team for pulling off such a great day.

We have a winner...

During recent Disaster Awareness Week activities, we were running a little competition. Visitors had the opportunity to answer ten questions about storms and preparedness. All the answers were on the display and this encouraged visitors to actually read the information.

Congratulations Diane and Brian Wesch of Palmerston North who have won the LCD wireless weather station. Ged Shirley, Chair of the CDEM Group's

Co-ordinating Executive Group is pictured presenting the prize at Horizons Regional Council this afternoon.

There will be another opportunity to win a weather station during Field Days in March.

Busy times...

It's been a while since my last post! We've been relatively busy in the office and the place has been a bit chaotic. The 'house' is undergoing some renovations at the moment and most of the team are trying to avoid the office. Luckily we are all set up to work remotely.

There are a couple of activities to report on... Disaster Awareness Week kicked off for us last Friday in Feilding. This tied in nicely with Farmer's Market and a visit by the Melbourne Cup to the region. Our new AirShelter arrived the day before and the displays were all tested on Thursday afternoon in the backyard of the Council - thank goodness everything went to plan. We were interrupted by a tsunami watch but that didn't hold us back!! We;ve also been in Wanganui, Taumarunui and Palmerston North with the display. The Dannevirke, Levin and Marton displays were postponed due to the weather. We'll catch those punters when the weather fines up.

On the Group Plan front, we received some late feedback from the Ministry that warranted getting the Review Committee together. Up until that point, we had only received submissions from officers and had pretty much agreed to a few minor changes before sending the Plan off to the Minister. The Review Committee gets together next Tuesday to consider the changes and will forward the Plan to the Minister following this meeting. Although there were seven pages of feedback, the general consensus was that the Plan was good to go and MCDEM were just trying to tighten things up a bit.

My view - tsunami response

Well, what a week! There have been quite a few accusations in the media about the NZ response to the earthquake and tsunami from Samoa. I have also been (accurately) reported in regional and national newspapers and there has been some discussion on radio about our ability to respond. I'd like to put the record straight.

The Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management (MCDEM) is NZs official tsunami warning agency. They receive advice from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre (PTWC) in Hawaii. MCDEM then analyses the information from PTWC to determine the impact on NZ coastlines and if appropriate issues a warning to agencies and CDEM Groups as well as the media.

The media is a multi-billion dollar communications industry that emergency managers should be collaborating with when it comes to intelligence gathering. They can get accurate information and images incredibly fast - there is no way we can replicate that (or would even want to). Media obviously receive the PTWC warning and broadcast these without an analysis of potential local impact so can do this in near-real time. I subscribe to the PTWC warnings and also the Global Disaster Alert and Co-ordination System warnings. In this case the first I knew was Paul Henry announcing it on Breakfast TV. The PTWC and GDACS warnings are also linked from the sidebar in this blog.

MCDEM has been clear that there are three levels of warning - natural where you feel the earthquake or see the sea rushing out (or rushing in), unofficial - media, family, friends and official warnings also promulgated via the media and agencies. The public are encouraged to react in an appropriate manner regardless of how they were alerted to the problem.

So what did we do as a Group? EOCs at Tararua and Horizons were activated. Horizons undertook the local response for Horowhenua, Manawatu and Rangitikei without the need to activate local EOCs for the initial response. Police and Fire were present in the Horizons EOC and assisted in decision making and response. SMS messages were sent to agencies via our WebSMS and the public via the Manawatu OPTN system.

Tararua undertook an evacuation of Akitio and Herbertville and a helicopter swept the coastline looking for people on the beach. Horizons had initiated a helicopter sweep of the west coast and ground crews from Fire were deployed to stop people going to the beach. The west coast flight was cancelled before it was completed as the warning cancellation was received from MCDEM.

If that's where it stopped, that would have been an excellent response! Unfortunately there was a fly in the ointment. Some SMS message were delayed in transmission - so here's the guts...

OPTN is a public service that subscribers pay for. We had about 358 people subscribed to the service. This was set up by Manawatu following the 2004 floods and had seen very little use since. Once public complaints started coming in of messages being received hours late and the local media contacted us to find out what was going on, I spoke with the company and advised that this is a level of service we could not support for public notifications.

WebSMS is a service we pay for. The company is based in Melbourne and they handled several hundred messages for us that day. We use this to advise agencies and not the public. There were also some significant delays in this service. Again, I've contacted the company to find out if its a service provider problem - but no. The messages were processed quickly (seconds to a few minutes) through their system to the NZ carriers. The delay unfortunately sits with the telcos in NZ.

I also experienced delays the following day when texting with my family - up to six hours in some cases (I'm sure we've all experienced that).

So what's the main lesson for me??? In future, we will be including the date time in the body of the message that goes out to an agency - this will use up space but will provide a check if a message is late in delivery. It has been our policy for a while now that warnings are passed to agencies verbally and that e-mail, fax and SMS messages are for heads-up and detail.

A full debrief of our response is being undertaken next week and a report will be sent to MCDEM and our Co-ordinating Executive Group.

West Coast Exercise ShakeOut

At 10:10 a.m. on Friday 18 September 2009, thousands of New Zealand West Coasters will participate in the regions largest earthquake drill ever! The purpose of the ShakeOut is to practice how to protect ourselves during earthquakes, and to get prepared at work, school, and home.

Everyone can participate - why not you? Check out the web site set up for this exercise here.

I think this is a great initiative and good luck to everyone on the Coast - check out the video they've had made - good job team!

AirShelter on the way

The Group is soon to benefit from a new AirShelter. The shelter is in reality an inflatable tent and will be used routinely for promotional opportunities. The plan at this stage is to have the shelter ready for Disaster Awareness Week at the beginning of October. Banners will be attached to the outside of the shelter with our current hazard theme - storms. Inside there will be the core information on disaster preparedness and the CDEM Group. This time round there will also be a table inside with a weather station.

The shelter will also be a resource for emergencies too. Designed with a removable floor (to protect a crime scene) and IV line cables (for the ambos) the shelter can also be joined to the St John shelter if we need a larger shelter.

PNCC have also recently purchased a lightweight shelter and the combination of resources will give the Group a lot of flexibility for promotional activities in the future.

Blog report

It's hard to believe that the blog has been running for just over a year now. My first post was on the 5th June 2008. The whole idea was to make life a little easier for me in getting some of the messages out to anyone who is interested. Ged Shirley (my boss and chair of our CEG) suggested doing a regular newsletter to keep punters informed on Group Plan review progress. To be honest, this sounded like more work. So the question was: how do I do this without creating a rod for my own back? It took a few days, but then I figured out that we should try a blog!

While there was a little hesitation, the Group has trusted me enough to publish the blog without moderation. I'm careful to make it clear if the views being expressed are mine or have been agreed by the Group. So big thumbs up to the Group for this!!

I've been tracking the blog using Google Analytics since it started and have reported to the CEG from time-to-time on how things are going. Here's a summary of the first year and a bit...

• 1,011 unique visitors
• 3,958 page views
• Most searched = Wanganui camera bar
• Visits by country (46 in all) = NZ (1,852), US (87), UK (40), Aus (19), Canada (14)... right down to Jamaica (1)
• 48% of visitors are one-time visits, 25% though have visited between 9 and 200 times
• Apart from one-timers, most visitors are on site between 3-10 minutes per visit.

So - hopefully you have found the blog useful. If you have any suggestions for items you would like to see - just let me know. Finally, a big thankyou to those who have supported the site and provided feedback (either on the site or to me directly)... CHEERS!

New stuff coming

The team has started looking at the new CDEM Group web site. Glen Young is Horizons' new Webmaster and is bringing a number of exciting ideas to the camp. Once we've got a concept developed, we'll be taking it out to the EMOs and CEG members for refinement.

We know that the site needs to be informative, current, and quickly updated (especially during events), but it also needs to look good, be easy to navigate and be modern. As well as the usual preparedeness information there are a number of cool things we're looking to include. Things like RSS feeds, inter-operability with Facebook, Bebo and other social networking sites, Twitter functionality, GIS map interface, web-cams, blogs and vlogs, tech-wikis and all sorts of other cool tools.

One of the global developments that is still just over the horizon is Google Wave. Although the developer tools are now available, Wave is not being launched by Google until later this year. We will look to take advantage of Google Wave as soon as we can. In my view this advancement is going to be one of the most significant advancements we've seen in recent years. Although the video is quite long (1 hr 20min), it is certainly mind-expanding.

May edition of e-Bulletin now on-line

For the very latest from MCDEM and the sector, check out the latest e-Bulletin here. Its great to see we get a mention in relation to Hastings' success at a recent expo... they borrowed the earthquake cubes and were voted second-equal best display by the public. It shows the advantage in being reasonably generic in the display material produced for use across the Group.

Refreshed logos

Well, after some discussion and debate about whether we should refresh the logo or not, the new logos are now available to the CDEM Group EMOs for use. The team at Blacksheep have put together a CD and branding kit that I'll be circulating shortly.

The branding kit comes complete with all the files in various forms, guidance on how to use the logos, the CD circle - it looks a little different but does meet the regulation description, the Group logo and a variation on the theme for localised use where a resource is not relevant to other areas.

I'm happy with the look and have already used it in a draft advertisement for the Are You Prepared booklet, and Jock has received it for use on the Eco Bags being made for the Group. We don't intend to make a concerted effort to replace the old branding but will gradually introduce the new look as the opportunities arise.

Storm warning...

Many of you who have seen the wallpaper on our EM laptops have commented on the fantastic shot. This week, I've been chatting with Mike Hollingshead, the awesome photographer who captured this image, about purchasing some good quality shots for our storm campaign coming up soon. I asked Mike what the light is in the middle of the storm... its the sun!

Mike has come to the party with some great images that will enlarge without going all pixellated. We used CuteSendIt to tranfer the files (they were pretty big - like 40Mb).

Check out Mike's gallery of stock images here.

Field Days 09

The team are all go at the Central Districts Field Days 2009. The emergency management display is again part of the emergency services stand. Our focus this year is on floods... rainfall and river levels and getting people onto the flood warning system. The first day of the show was busy in the morning but quietened down in the afternoon. Hopefully the weather will be kind to us for the rest of the show.

The display that Evan seems to be guarding is comprised of a rain gauge stand (foreground) and a stilling well tower model (with the green cabinet on top). Pull-ups (not the training nappies) explain how this technology works and around the back are displays of the 2004 floods. Cargill and the hydro boys have spent several late nights building and getting the models working - thanks guys.

As an aside, the earthquake cubes from last year are heading over to Hastings in the next few weeks for an Expo there.

The Gospel according to Jeff

For about a year now Jeff Watson and his team have been posting river level forecasts to the Horizons Regional Council website. This is a project undertaken on behalf of the Emergency Management Office and I'm happy to say has received generally supportive feedback from the community. Recently however a few agencies have been complaining that our long-term forecasting is inaccurate and their decision-making has been affected by this. Well, that's where the discussions have become quite interesting in Council and have ranged from stopping posting the forecasts to the website to wrapping it in 10 pages of legal disclaimer and description. I'm pleased that we'll be taking a middle of the line approach in the next few weeks to provide a short disclaimer and brief description of the limitations of the forecasts. It's worth pointing out here that there are only a handful of organisations around the world prepared to put river level forecasts out into the public arena, and we are the only regional council in New Zealand to move it out of the back room.

So, brace yourself for what will probably be my lengthiest post since I created the blog…

Firstly, the forecasting models draw on a number of data inputs, the forecast rainfall, the actual rainfall and river levels, and then run these numbers through a virtual catchment to try and predict how high the river might get at a few critical spots (well that sounds fairly straight forward). Let's pick on the Whanganui model to try and explain some of the limitations of this forecasting.

Forecast rainfall… we automatically receive the forecast rainfall from the MetService every eight hours. We get this once global forecast models have run to provide input into their local climate models and it literally takes this long to happen. We have recently found out that MetService actually run seven different models and then pick the best to base their forecasts and warnings on (that makes sense). The river level forecast however draws on the same model every time, regardless of whether its being used by the MetService to develop their forecasts - we're seeing how we can pick up the best three forecasts that are chosen by the forecasters instead of the same model every time. Next (and this is where we get a bit 'Dr Who') there is the space-time-quantity continuum… does the rain that was forecast, up to 48 hours out, arrive where they said, when they said and in the intensities they said? You only need to be out by one degree of track to move the rain from one sub-catchment to the next and the model will be wrong. Equally, the forecast quantity presents a challenge - any more or any less than was forecast and the model will be wrong. In fact, the quantity might be right but it all arrives in two hours instead of 12 hours (you guessed it, the model will be wrong). Finally, if the front stalls or moves faster than expected the model will be wrong. So… you might as well poke a sticky wet finger in your ear and look at the sky (which is what some of the team did before we got the model).

Next, the actual rainfall… the Whanganui catchment is a large, hilly, sparcely populated and difficult to access part of the region. The number of sites we actually collect data from is very limited, to the point where it can be raining in a couple of sub-catchments and we won't even know. We are looking to improve the model by drawing on rain gauges outside of the catchment in Taranaki and Waikato and then interpolating the information across the catchments as well as adding an additional two rainfall sites into the catchment later this year. Of course if any of the equipment fails then this will make the model particularly vulnerable. The team keep on top of this as much as possible but sometimes our equipment gets stolen, hit by lightning, eaten by pests, filled with spiders or even used as target practice. Of course, of the rain that actually falls, some will evaporate, some will be absorbed and some will make it to the river and all three of these will be different for every event depending on what has happened before the rain arrived. The flood forecasting model attempts to deal with these effects.

So now we're interested in the water that actually makes it to the river… assuming it's arrived when, where and in the quantities forecast and wasn't evaporated or absorbed! The Whanganui catchment is made up of multiple sub-catchments, it may be raining in some but not others and each of these sub-catchments are feeding the river to varying degrees. Finally, the river height and flow will be recorded at a river level site (and possibly other parameters for other activities in Council). Now that we have a hard number on the river level it should be fairly straight forward to forecast how high the river will get in the town - right… we know the average travel time on the river and we know how much water is coming… but don't forget that more sub-catchments will be feeding the river before it gets to the town so we need to add these in too. Another little catch is this thing called a rating curve. To calculate the volume of water in the river, a cross-section of the river is taken and co-related to the river level site so… if the river is say 6m deep, the volume of water passing over the cross-section is say 1000 cubic metres/second (or cumecs). But what if the profile of the cross-section has changed (and Mother Nature does that to us), what if the river deepened at that spot and the volume was actually 2000 cumecs - the height could be the same on the gauge… this could have serious consequences down stream.

The Pipiriki site is a significant site for the Whanganui River. The site provides plenty of lead time for the town and is the basis for the Horizons and Wanganui District Council joint Flood Action Plan. There are two sites down river of this that enable us to confirm margins of error in the model. During possible events, staff in our emergency operations centre manually evaluate the data when it gets to this point so if the model is under-forecasting we should pick it up in plenty of time. If the model is over-forecasting… better safe than sorry.

When all said and done, forecasting how deep a complicated river system like the Whanganui will get in a few days time is a little more complicated than your average punter might think - but that won't stop us trying. No other agency is in a position to tell the local communities this level of information. Since the model has been running, we've had a couple of small events go through. Even though the model is designed to be more accurate in larger events, these small events have allowed us to re-calibrate the model (this should be in place soon). You can also see that improvements in forecasting data are being sought along with actual data from new and neighbouring sites. The main thing to remember is that the further out the forecast, the less accurate it will be (we can accurately tell you what actually happened though). While work continues to improve existing models, new models are being produced… we're expecting the Manawatu forecasting model to get plenty of hits when its up and running later this year.

Open day - Feilding Fire

The team from Horizons were loud and proud at the Feilding Fire Brigade this past Saturday (but not as loud as the Fire Service). The Green RIG and earthquake cubes were staffed by the two Ross' and Environmental Education team. Emergency services, including fire, police, ambulance and the recsue helicopter were the main attraction but Vector, the Air Force and HeliPro were also present.

The open day was well attended by members of the public with displays of Fire Service skills and equiment. The weather packed it in later in the day but not before a lot of visitors to the site. As the wind picked up we were lucky not to see a big orange dome become airborne over Feilding.

Another good example of the services working together... thanks to Peter and the team at Feilding Fire for the invitation to be involved.