Auckland Council chief executive Jim Stabback. Photo / Michael Craig
Auckland Council chief executive Jim Stabback. Photo / Michael Craig
Auckland Council chief executive Jim Stabback is fronting today on the damning report into the January 27 floods that contained numerous references to the absence of senior leaders at the council headquarters that night.
A handful of journalists, including two from the Herald, have been invited to a sit down at the council headquarters this afternoon with Stabback and governance director Phil Wilson.
Stabback has been lying low since former police commissioner Mike Bush delivered his report last Wednesday into the catastrophic Auckland Anniversary floods that claimed four lives, limiting his response to a statement.
Auckland Council chief executive Jim Stabback. Photo / Michael Craig
Mayor Wayne Brown has also avoided general media scrutiny, issuing a statement on Wednesday and going on TVNZ’s Q & A on Sunday, saying lives lost during the floods were due to poor planning.
The Bush report found a “system failure” of leadership in the first 12 hours of the response in which “much of the damage was done” before Auckland Council or Brown had taken any action.
“This unprecedented event unfolded with extraordinary speed. Minutes mattered,” said the 107-page report.
The flood was an important “wake-up call” for Auckland Council and its civil defence and emergency management team, Bush said. He said the 17 recommendations in the report should be implemented shortly.
Stabback will today address the report’s findings, recommendations, and an implementation plan going forward.
Last week, he said the council would “welcome the opportunity to review how our systems performed, what worked and what didn’t, what we can learn, and how we will immediately make improvements.
“Recommendations that can and should be easily or immediately implemented, will be. In some cases, actions are already underway,” he said.
Stabback said the floods were “unprecedented”, the size and scale of the disaster had unexpected intensity, and the complexity of gathering a clear picture of what was unfolding,“, especially in the first 12 hours”.
“[This] made this event, unlike anything we have experienced before. We were not as well prepared for it as we could have been,” he said.
On Sunday, Brown would not be drawn on Stabback’s actions, saying he had written to Stabback requesting the review’s 17 recommendations be initiated within a month.
“We all could have done better and I apologised. Have you heard an apology from the others?”
Former police commissioner Mike Bush issued his report last week. Photo / Herald
The Weekend Herald revealed Stabback left the council headquarters to go home shortly before 5pm on the night of the floods when the emergency response to the lethal downpour would have been at its peak.
Stabback admitted he was at home during the evening of January 27 and “with hindsight” would have stayed in the office.
“Throughout the evening of 27 January, I was at home and fully connected to the organisation via my laptop and mobile,” Stabback said.
“Of course, with hindsight, had we known the extent of what was about to unfold between late afternoon and throughout the night, I would have chosen to remain in the office.
“Around 6-6.30pm I considered returning to the office, however, that could well have taken over an hour and would have reduced direct contact with Phil [Wilson, governance director] and the organisation during that time.”
Nearly four weeks after the catastrophic floods, Stabback announced he was resigning for “personal reasons” as chief executive midway through a five-year term.
