Five homes have been evacuated as large swells crash over the road and footpaths between Breaker and Owhiro Bays. Video / Mark Mitchell
Freak waves that smashed Wellington's south coast last week have left some residents fearing lives could be lost next time if the community isn't warned beforehand.
The head of the Insurance Council of New Zealand has given Wellington mayor Andy Foster a dressing down over the incident, which left locals scrambling to protect their properties as 6m waves flooded roads and front yards.
One person was knocked over by the waves and had to be taken to hospital with moderate injuries.
In an email shown to the Herald, the Insurance Council's Tim Grafton told Foster he was concerned for the community and for "resilience capability" after seeing media coverage of the event.
"As you will know, the insurance sector has long-stressed the need to respond to increased risks that coastal properties face from the impacts of climate change," he wrote.
"It is critical that where advanced warning of risks to property are available that arrangements exists with the appropriate authorities, so warnings are relayed immediately to initiate a planned response to reduce the impact on the community."
A worker attempting to clear debris dumped by huge swells rolling into Owhiro Bay on Wellington's South coast. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Niwa does not issue warnings to Wellington City Council about large wave events, a spokeswoman said.
Information on the incoming waves was not shared to council in the days before the swells hit.
"We are happy to engage with the council or Civil Defence emergency management to analyse the causes of last week's event and work together on an alerting system," she said.
Grafton said had there been warning about the waves, council "would have had plenty of time to take pre-emptive action that would have reduced the amount of damage to property and kept residents from harm's way.
"I would strongly urge that lessons are taken from what happened on Wellington's south coast last week to address the communication gaps and apparent lack of planning, so people and property can be better protected. Incidents like this will inevitably occur again."
Owhiro Bay Residents' Association's Eugene Doyle said what happened last week was "a disgrace".
"I think people are upset and shocked that there was no early warning system in place. Even though all the data was there, nobody actually joined the dots and told the community that these potentially killer waves, these enormous waves, were going to strike our community.
"If we had been warned even a day prior - even a few hours prior . . . we could have secured our properties and braced ourselves, batten down the hatches. That didn't happen."
Doyle said many homes took "hammerings", with one person even getting a tree swept through their front window into their kitchen.
There was widespread damage to windows, door frames, garages, and vehicles, and "truckloads" of debris had to be taken out of the suburb in the clean up.
But Doyle said the bigger issue was a failed system which did not warn residents, and authorities in Wellington who were in "a deep, deep sleep".
"City council is still horrendously unprepared to protect us from the kind of events we had on Wednesday.
"I don't want us to be picking up bodies on the beach because the council doesn't have systems in place to warn us."
Niwa wave modelling expert Dr Richard Forman said the 6m waves were not unusually high for an area which occasionally gets 8m waves, but that the wave height combined with the length of the wave period was what caused the havoc.
"In this case the wave period was quite long, about 17 seconds . . . the combined effect of quite a large wave and a long wave period makes them have more impact when they get to a beach. The wave will run up a beach more than a short period wave will," he said.
Huge swells rolling into Owhiro Bay on Wellington's South coast. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The swells last week were caused by winds blowing for a long period of time on water offshore. The waves could travel out from underneath the weather system and hit the shore, without the weather following.
He said long wave period were a characteristic of this type of system.
