The ongoing push for coastal tsunami warning systems in Mount Maunganui and Pāpāmoa have faced fresh delays. Photo / File
The ongoing push for coastal tsunami warning systems in Mount Maunganui and Pāpāmoa have faced fresh delays. Photo / File
Plans for tsunami alert systems for coastal Tauranga residents are once again up in the air.
The Tauranga City Council has dropped out of a project investigating in-home emergency alerting systems, while progress towards installing outdoor speakers has been resumed after a six-month delay.
The council has also begun a review of its overall tsunami response plan after realising it was out of step with the national approach.
Western Bay leaders have debated for more than a decade on how to officially warn people of an incoming tsunami, trialling multiple siren options and even helicopter-mounted loudspeakers.
The Tauranga council dropped its favoured air-raid style sirens in 2017 after an incoming Government policy ruled them out.
In a milestone 2018 decision, the council elected to pursue two warning systems: Fixed outdoor public address speakers along the coast and in-home plug-in alert systems, supplementing a national cellphone alert system.
Western Bay leaders have debated for more than a decade on how to officially warn people of an incoming tsunami. Photo / File
Funding of $1.8 million over 10 years was signed off to start installing the speakers in tsunami evacuation zones, as well as $100,000 to investigate the in-home technology with Thames-Coromandel District Council.
Discussing the council's 2019-20 Annual Plan in a meeting last week, Mount Maunganui/Pāpāmoa ward councillor Leanne Brown asked for an update.
Chief executive Marty Grenfell said he made a decision the previous week to "pause" Tauranga's involvement with the in-home project and let Thames-Coromandel move to phase two alone.
He said the council was scoping the sirens with a contractor and reviewing plans for more "inland structures" - tsunami refuge mounds like the $1m one built in Gordon Spratt Reserve - as to "whether or not they will continue to be developed in the way that the first one has been developed".
When the Pāpāmoa refuge opened in April the council had plans for three more in the pipeline and had started stockpiling fill in Pāpāmoa East.
After the meeting, Grenfell told the Bay of Plenty Times the council had commissioned a review of its overall tsunami response planning.
This was "a result of the most recent GNS Science information and the fact Tauranga is not in alignment with the national direction around tsunami response".
The outcomes of the review, as well as his full reasons for pausing the in-home project, would be reported to the council in due course.
Mount Maunganui/Pāpāmoa ward councillor Steve Morris said he was relieved the council had pressed pause on the in-home system as put the focus on the outdoor speakers.
"My priority has always been the outdoor sirens," he said. "It has been a six-year battle to get it over the line."
While in-home systems were effective, Morris said, the systems were expensive and complicated and should be an opt-in "user-pays" arrangement.
Pāpāmoa mum Lisa Adamson lives in the tsunami zone and says she thinks about it "all the time". Photos / Andrew Warner
Councillor Brown said tsunami warning systems were a huge project. "It's important we get it right."
Tauranga and Western Bay of Plenty Grey Power Association president Jennifer Custins said having no in-home alert system was worrying for elderly people who were hard of hearing.
"It is a little bit of a worry for elder people," she said. "If they've got the TV going or the curtains closed, they've got no way of knowing what's happening."
Pāpāmoa Residents and Ratepayers Association president Philip Brown said air raid-style sirens were the preferred option alongside text message alerts.
"We like the two-step approach," he said. "Air raids will send you to look at your phone."
Long-time Pāpāmoa resident Bruce Crosby said in-home alert systems wouldn't work.
Crosby, a beachfront Pāpāmoa resident since 1965, said sirens would warn elderly people who did not have cellphones to receive text alerts.
He believed, however, that investing in tsunami alert systems was not a high priority for the city.
"How many tsunamis have we had in the last 100 years?" he said. "We can't plan for everything."
Lisa Adamson, 46, lives in the tsunami zone in Pāpāmoa and disagrees. She thinks about it "all the time", especially how she would get to her two children at different schools.
She said it was "definitely" important that the council was talking about and planning for a tsunami.
"Outdoor sirens definitely, text alerts are really, really good, any social media alerts ... [are] a big help."
Adamson said the cost of installing in-home alarms would be unaffordable for many.
"I definitely think it should be something where everybody can hear it."
In recent years the council has created a network of signposted and mapped tsunami evacuation routes and safe locations in areas at risk of inundation.
TSUNAMI TIMELINE: 2005 – plan to install 10 sirens in the Western Bay announced 2006 – Siren testing reveals "black spots" where they could not be heard; test message alerts launched; in-home sirens investigated 2007 – helicopter mounted loud-speakers tested, installation of up to 90 smaller fixed sirens discussed 2008 - Tsunami sirens clear first vote 2011 - Tsunami warning sirens abandoned in favour of remote-controlled household alarms, push to install tsunami warning sirens along coastal suburbs, budget papers showed the estimated $750,000 cost of the sirens would not be spent until 2016-17 2012 - Tsunami Survive, a community-driven action plan to survive a tsunami, was ticked off by the Tauranga City Council, powerful air raid-styled tsunami sirens back in contention 2013 - New tsunami inundation map for Tauranga shows more safe havens for people living along the coastline than originally thought 2014 - Sixteen tsunami safe zones from Mauao to Pāpāmoa identified as part of an important new emergency evacuation plan; warning sirens ruled out 2015 - Public tsunami open days held to learn about planned new tsunami mounds and assembly points; council set to spend millions on increasing evacuation routes, safe zones and bridges 2016 - Councillors consider tsunami alert mechanisms 2017 - A tsunami mass warning system that talks discussed; Air raid-style tsunami sirens ruled out; council settles on a combination of in-home device and a network of outdoor speakers along the coast
Tsunami preparation: What should the city council be spending its time and money on?
Zaria: "Outdoor sirens, because everyone can hear it." Jacqueline: "Outdoor sirens, because it will be hugely expensive to put them inside."
"To put the alarm in each house, because in previous occasions the alarm system didn't work and we couldn't hear it. There was a test run done before, and we couldn't hear that."
Shiv Thammalla, 58, Pāpāmoa
"Outdoor sirens and also exits to get out of Pāpāmoa. We need more. The freeway's there, we need access onto that, just to help Pāpāmoa people get out of that place. There's only one way in, and there's only one way out."
Colin Gardiner, 56, coastal Te Puke
"I think outdoor sirens. I think more people will hear them. If you've got them inside and you're outside, you're not going to hear it, so I think definitely outside."
