Cyclone timeline a useful exercise

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Contrary to what a correspondent said on Thursday’s opinion page, there has not been an external audit of council and Civil Defence actions during Cyclone Gabrielle.

An independent third party was commissioned to compile an event timeline, which runs from February 4 through to February 19 (the cyclone began affecting Tairāwhiti on the 13th).

It doesn’t include any judgement on council and Civil Defence actions, as was suggested by the correspondent — that is something people can assess for themselves, thanks to the actions having been independently verified and collated alongside events over those 16 days in the clear and easy-to-follow timeline.

A short introduction to the seven-page timeline says it “provides an account of the key milestones, decisions and coordination efforts of the Tairāwhiti Civil Defence Emergency Management, and their emergency management partners, in the Readiness, Response and immediate Recovery phases”. It also references the devastating effects on the region and the declaration of a National State of Emergency for only the third time ever on February 14.

In its media release about the timeline, issued on June 2, the council described it as a “forensic-level dive into logs, records and data sources, presenting a clear run sheet of how the regional readiness phase is rolled out”.

This is a very useful exercise and the details in the timeline are really interesting — especially overlaying the knowledge we now have in hindsight of what was actually happening at Te Karaka.

A public survey on how people felt about the response over Cyclone Gabrielle was also opened in May.

The council says the results of this survey are now with Maven Consulting, and an analysis of them is expected back in mid-August.

■  Thursday’s editorial responding to criticism by the council CEO of the timing (during a regional State of Emergency) of our lead story last Saturday, on iwi leadership of the Te Karaka community saying they were looking after the township as they had lost trust in GDC-led Civil Defence Emergency Management because of how it managed the response to Cyclone Gabrielle, omitted mention of two initial replies to our request for response to the criticisms last Friday.

The first two replies advised when the council sent e-text evacuation warnings to Te Karaka residents signed up to receive them, plus an Emergency Management Alert, and the messaging they wanted to go out to the community. Asked if the council would be responding to the criticisms, we then got the reply referenced, that included they would “not be engaging on this topic anymore”.