Emergency staff to monitor TV after tsunami scare

Keeping an eye on the television - as well as a lookout for natural disasters - has been added to emergency management staff's responsibilities in the wake of last month's tsunami scare, Civil Defence Minister Rick Barker says.

People, especially on the North Island's East Coast, rushed for high ground on May 4 after the BBC reported a tsunami was headed for New Zealand. However, the alert, issued by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii after an earthquake in Tonga which measured 7.8 on the Richter scale, had been withdrawn.

Mr Barker told the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee yesterday that emergency management staff had handled the alert no differently to how they handled the eight to 10 similar warnings issued each year.

"There was no problem," Mr Barker said.

"The only thing on this particular day, the thing that changed, was that overseas media got access to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre's advisory and started running stories on it. We've never seen this before."

People on the East Coast, many woken by calls from anxious friends and relatives overseas, were often unable to get clear official information about the tsunami warning, a concern Mr Barker acknowledged.

He said Civil Defence needed to keep New Zealanders better informed, and memorandums of understanding were being finalised with broadcast media about sending out disaster alerts. New systems were tested days later and were satisfactory, he said.

"We will be quite different in the future."

Emergency management staff would now also monitor overseas cable news networks, Mr Barker said.

"We weren't aware for quite a long time that we had a message quite different to what was being broadcast over another media."