The overall effect of this for the unaware reader is undermining their trust and confidence in those who go above and beyond the call of duty to support our communities.
Since the State of Emergency was announced, there have been more than 30 interview requests from national media.
However, the only request we got from our local paper was about Mr Te Aho’s criticisms. That request was received on Friday with a deadline of 4pm that day to respond.
Tairāwhiti has had three states of emergency this year, and five in the past 19 months.
One of which was an unprecedented event (Gabrielle).
I respect that people are entitled to their opinions. However, having been involved in many events now I am a staunch advocate for the work the Civil Defence teams and volunteers do, along with the outstanding communication demonstrated by Mayor Stoltz.
Civil Defence comprises Tairāwhiti emergency and response agencies, iwi, welfare support and community link volunteers.
Council is the administrative agent for CDEM.
After every emergency event, we debrief, we identify areas where we can improve, and we implement improvements.
For Cyclone Gabrielle our teams did an excellent job despite there being no power, roads or communications.
Everyone did the best they could given the extraordinary circumstances.
For this event, contrary to what Mr Te Aho stated about Civil Defence, we’ve been working with Te Aitanga a Mahaki. Iwi are fundamental to CDEM, we simply would not have a functioning Civil Defence if we didn’t have our iwi partners and hapu leads engaged in supporting their communities.
Civil Defence is an all-in community effort.
During an event CDEM meets up to six times daily to share and update information across the region and respond to requests. For this we we rely heavily on our emergency and response agencies, iwi (including Te Aitanga a Mahaki) welfare support and community link volunteers.
Our CDEM community link people, live in these communities and are a reflection of every dedicated volunteer we have across our region.
This is a time when people are already feeling anxious and overwhelmed.
It’s important we focus on providing accurate information and practical solutions that can help navigate the situation, and the timing of your article only served to create more confusion, which is not helpful in any way.
While the Gisborne Herald is entitled to print what it wants, given the emergency, it should have held off the article and comments it sought until after the State of Emergency.
In light of these concerns, I hope the Gisborne Herald will consider rethinking its approach in the future and provide more constructive and helpful information to our community during this time of crisis on its prominent front page.
There is clearly a time and place for articles like the one you published on Saturday but during a State of Emergency is not that time.
See response from editor
