Bridges to offer tsunami escape for Papamoa

A life-saving series of foot bridges offering an escape route from a killer tsunami are only a few months from being built at Papamoa.
The low-lying suburb has the additional peril of the Wairakei Stream creating a big obstacle to thousands of people fleeing a tsunami on foot.
Tauranga City Council has responded to the threat by agreeing to spend $200,000 building foot bridges at intervals along the stream to help people reach the safety of high ground.
The eight bridges will form a vital link along evacuation routes for those who felt their chances of survival were better served by leaving the car at home.
Council transportation operations manager Martin Parkes was this week checking potential locations.
The next step was to prioritise each site on the basis of which would get the most people out as quickly as possible.
Urgency has been added to the project by the scare last Thursday when a 7.6 magnitude earthquake in the Kermadecs sent a tsunami towards New Zealand, leaving little more than half an hour for Tauranga people to reach safety if the advisory from Civil Defence had turned out to be bad news.
The area under investigation stretches from the planned Sandhurst interchange with the Tauranga Eastern Link to the end of Papamoa East, with most of the focus on areas east of Domain Rd.
"We need to evacuate as many people as possible in one go."
The target was eight bridges across Wairakei Stream with construction to start early next year.
The next few weeks will be spent determining exactly where and what priority to give each location, followed by designing the foot bridges and then construction.
At present the closest high ground for most Papamoa people escaping a tsunami on foot was the Papamoa Hills, but all that would change when the Eastern Link motorway was built.
Once the motorway was finished in five years, Mr Parkes said people would not have to walk so far to feel relatively safe on a road two metres above ground level - involving a maximum distance of 1.5km for  residents.
Meanwhile, council investigations continue towards the target of getting tsunami warning sirens installed within two years.
Council planning engineer Barry Somers said he was in discussions with Bay's Emergency Management Group to ensure that whatever was installed would be compatible with sirens elsewhere in the region.
"We don't want to put something in that was completely out of step with everywhere else."
Once they had settled on the type of siren, they would prepare an acoustic plan, obtain resource consent and then install the sirens.
The council has budgeted nearly $400,000 for the sirens this year and intends to approach the Emergency Management Group for a contribution. A decision on funding the rest of the cost would be made by the council later this year.
Mr Somers said they would not know the actual cost until they had settled on the type of siren although Christchurch's network of sirens covering New Brighton and Lyttelton provided a good guide at $750,000.
The council intends to put sirens into the most at-risk area first - the northern end of Mount Maunganui where the lack of protective sand dunes saw the sea wash across the isthmus to Pilot Bay in the Wahine Storm of 1968.
"It is amazing how much protection is offered by sand dunes."