A trove of government documents reveals the view from Wellington as NZ’s biggest city was drenched by a record amount of rain on January 27, and the clash over school closures. Investigations Editor ALEX SPENCE reports.
Days after Auckland was devastated by an unprecedented downpour in late January, officials at the city’s emergency management agency were struggling to cope with the aftermath of the disaster.
In Wellington, that was causing frustration at New Zealand’s National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), according to a trove of government documents obtained under the Official Information Act.
“There are fundamentals not being worked through, they are struggling to get head above water,” NEMA’s acting director Roger Ball told colleagues in one email obtained by the Herald.
Local authorities had been heavily criticised for poor communication while a record amount of rain drenched Auckland on Friday January 27. Now, several days later, they were still not in command of the situation as the city moved into a recovery phase.
The documents, which include briefings, emails, and encrypted messages obtained from several departments and ministerial offices, bring into sharp relief the chaos across the government as more than 210 millimetres of rain fell in the span of six hours.
If you have a story contact our Investigations Editor at alex.spence@nzme.co.nz
The deluge was a “once-in-200-year” event, according to NIWA, and damaged thousands of properties, crippled critical infrastructure, overwhelmed emergency services, and killed four people.
The documents add to the disclosures in a damning review of Auckland Council’s emergency response by former police commissioner Mike Bush in April. That review found that the Auckland authorities were poorly prepared for a disaster of such magnitude and criticised senior city leaders for not publicly taking control.
They also show that NEMA, central government departments, and ministers in Wellington, were caught out by the unexpected deluge in New Zealand’s biggest city, not just the Auckland authorities.
NEMA’s director emergency management John Price told the Herald in a statement that the agency is currently undertaking an internal review of its role and actions in the response and early recovery phases of the Auckland floods and Cyclone Gabrielle, which devastated parts of the North Island less than a fortnight later.
Price said NEMA will make these findings public when the review is complete but did not say when that is expected to happen.
According to the documents obtained by the Herald, NEMA circulated an intelligence briefing at around 8am on Friday January 27 warning that the Auckland region would be hit by severe weather. However, the weather forecasts did not predict anywhere near the amount of rainfall that would hit the city that day.
Late that Friday afternoon, ministers and staff in the Beehive began to realise that the deluge was much worse than expected.
At 4.23pm, emergency minister Kieran McAnulty told his ministerial staff that he was fielding inquiries from Auckland MPs about the government’s response. The Prime Minister’s office was also receiving a flurry of messages.
Officials scrambled to get a detailed picture of what was happening on the ground in Auckland. A group of senior staff shared updates in a private group on Signal, an encrypted messaging app used by journalists, activists, and whistleblowers to communicate secretly.
But the Wellington officials’ knowledge was dependent on their counterparts in Auckland who were struggling to get on top of the disaster, the documents show.
Ministers were frustrated by the lack of information. McAnulty complained to his adviser at one point that he needed more regular updates from NEMA, according to a timeline prepared by his office.
At 10.20pm, McAnulty told NEMA’s acting director that he and Prime Minister Chris Hipkins were “receiving significant volumes of queries” and needed regular updates through the night.
“Making sense of the situation in Auckland has been very challenging for us all,” Dave Gawn, NEMA’s chief executive, acknowledged in one email on Sunday 29 January. “We have flown up a liaison team to assist us in this.”
On Monday 30 January, NEMA asked a senior national security staffer at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) to set up a “watch group” of senior government officials to guide the rescue and recovery efforts.
“There are a range of challenges as we move into recovery,” a senior adviser at NEMA told DPMC. “As you’ll have seen, there have been challenges with ensuring the public have the information they need. We’re expecting there to be a review (done nationally, as well as one by Auckland Emergency Management).”
In response, DPMC activated the Officials Committee for Domestic and External Security Coordination (pronounced “O-desk”), a committee of top government executives that convenes at moments of national crisis, such as the Christchurch earthquakes and the 2019 mosque killings.
Other email exchanges show that NEMA pushed Auckland Council executives to move faster to implement crucial processes.
It was “critically important” that the council urgently set up a mayoral relief fund and begin advertising it to collect donations for people affected by the flooding, a NEMA official said on Monday January 30. “Really important you harness the generosity of the public as quickly as possible.”
The council also needed to urgently address a backlog of hundreds of requests for welfare needs assessments that were piling up in an email inbox, the official said.
“It is clear that with this event a number of challenges have arisen that I believe require a more in-depth review than our [business as usual] debrief process provides,” the NEMA official said.
In response, Gawn told colleagues he had raised the issues directly with Auckland Council chief executive Jim Stabback.
Gawn said he had suggested to Stabback that he “cast his eyes over” a 2018 report which made recommendations about the city’s flawed handling of a previous storm.
“Jim thinks they have the mayoral relief fund in hand,” Gawn said. “Took on board the other points and will look into the backlog of welfare needs requests tonight.”
Ball, the acting director, replied that he had just had a meeting with council executives where he also pressed NEMA’s concerns.
“I have raised some basic structure and process issues: rosters, fatigue, forward planning, overnight activation for next rainband,” Ball told his colleagues. “There are fundamentals not being worked through, they are struggling to get head above water. I’ve asked they push for more… staff urgently.”
The documents also show that government officials in Wellington spent days trying to clean up another internal communications mix-up, relating to the abrupt decision to close Auckland schools for a week.
The direction by the Ministry of Education late on Monday January 30 — ordering schools and other educational institutions to stay closed until after Waitangi Day, to relieve pressure on Auckland roads — caused widespread confusion, partly because an IT error resulted in the email going to only half of school principals.
Act leader David Seymour attacked the move at the time as “dictatorial, impractical, and infuriating” and National’s Christopher Luxon said it was “absolutely shambolic”.
Documents reveal that the fallout triggered several days of back-and-forth between officials in various departments about who was responsible for the decision.
The prospect of closing schools to relieve pressure on the city’s transport network was raised at a meeting involving the Prime Minister at around lunchtime on that Monday, the documents show.
According to one account, Hipkins was sympathetic to the idea and said he would discuss it with Education Minister Jan Tinetti.
Several hours later, the Ministry of Education sent the communication to schools ordering them to close for the rest of the week, stating that NEMA had “asked us to take action to help minimise traffic movement on Auckland roads while vital infrastructure is urgently repaired”.
But that prompted pushback from NEMA and Auckland Council, which insisted they had not explicitly asked for schools to be closed.
“We need to get this narrative corrected with MOE,” Ball told his colleagues at NEMA on that Monday night, “they have it completely wrong”.
In an email to education secretary Iona Holsted, an aide to Mayor Wayne Brown said the mayor had been blindsided by the decision to close schools.
Brown had been verbally advised by Auckland Transport on Monday morning that the transport network could cope if businesses and education providers remained open, the aide said.
“The Mayor and his office had in mind some type of advice to Boards of Trustees and other employees,” they added. “He had not been advised that consideration was being given to closing [early childhood education] centres, schools and tertiary institutions until after Waitangi Day.”
Holsted accepted that the decision rested with her. On Wednesday February 1, the ministry reversed its position and told schools they could open the next day.
NEMA said in a statement that it recognised the “remarkable efforts” of emergency management staff around the country in responding to recent severe weather events, and that they will work together to make the system more resilient for future disasters.
“We note that the challenges faced during these severe weather events, such as situational awareness and workforce constraints, are challenges that the emergency management system has faced for some time, and is working to remedy,” Price said.
Stabback, the Auckland Council chief executive, said: “We cannot ignore the fact that this event was unprecedented... And we know we were not as well prepared for it as we could have been.” The council has accepted Bush’s recommendations and is “absolutely committed to ensuring Aucklanders are prepared for an emergency and being ready to respond when the worst happens”.
Auckland Emergency Management took immediate remedial action after a “hot” debrief of its response in early March and is working on making longer-term changes. Those improvements were evident during Cyclone Gabrielle and in response to a sudden heavy downpour in May, the council said.
Heart of the City Christmas Tree lights up in Auckland CBD. Video / Supplied