The Fire Service says lessons have been learned after Christchurch's CTV Building collapse in February 2011.
The Fire Service says lessons have been learned after Christchurch's CTV Building collapse in February 2011.
It was New Zealand's worst natural disaster in modern history. Global experts agreed that the February 22, 2011 earthquake, which claimed 185 lives, would've "stretched any fire service in the world".
But the brave firefighters dragging survivors and bodies from rubble and twisted steel of collapsed buildings were badly let down by their bosses on that fateful day more than six years ago.
Independent reviews of the New Zealand Fire Service's performance, along with a coronial inquest, found the top brass "missing in action".
"Where was the brass when it was needed?" Nigel Hampton, QC, asked during an inquest into the deaths of eight people who survived the six-storey CTV Building collapse but died before they could be rescued.
The lack of leadership cost lives, some victims of families say. There was a lack of expert training, cheap or missing gear, and holes in emergency response protocols and co-ordination.
The catastrophic pancaking of the CTV Building, killing 115 people, resulted in the biggest shake up of the Fire Service in more than six decades.
While Coroner Gordon Matenga cleared the service of causing any deaths, he made eight recommendations to improve New Zealand's response to any future major disasters.
Three years after those recommendations, in a detailed response to Herald inquiries, the Fire Service says each and every recommendation has been addressed and "subsequently improved".
Many systems have already been tested in responses to major quakes in Kaikoura, Seddon and Wellington, as well as the flooding in Bay of Plenty town of Edgecumbe this year.
"The earthquake was a disaster on an unprecedented scale that presented many challenges that emergency responders and our firefighters had not faced before," said Fire Service chief executive and national commander Paul McGill.
"They worked tirelessly to try and save as many people as they could, and the memories and devastation of that day will be with them forever.
"In memory of those who died that day, and respect for their loved ones and those who tried to save them, we continue to learn and improve how we best respond to emergencies to keep our communities and our people safe."
The changes
Srecko "Alec" Cvetanov with his children Todor and Katerina. Cvetanov's wife Tamara Cvetanov was killed during the collapse of the CTV building. Photo / Martin Hunter
Since the quakes and the subsequent CTV inquest, the Fire Service has signed a memorandum of understanding with Air New Zealand and the Defence Force, and agreements are in place with Mondial and HIC logistics, to ensure that USAR teams - the crack urban search and rescue units based in Auckland, Palmerston North and Christchurch that specialise in finding and recovering people in dangerous situations - can respond quickly to major events and not be separated from their gear.
Twenty-one USAR technicians have completed and maintained specialist "Dogman" training, with a further eight gaining International Air Transport Association (IATA) certification.
And it's now the default position of the Fire Service to accept or request help from a United Nations Disaster Assessment and Co-ordination (UNDAC) team - although McGill says it is "dependent on the scale of the event", with advice given to the New Zealand Government which makes the ultimate call.
The New Zealand Deployment Group, chaired by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, has a focus on working together more collaboratively, he says.
The agencies exercise every year, and in the wake of the February 2011 quake have developed offshore deployment guidelines - a code of conduct that sets out roles and responsibilities and agreed command and control structures.
USAR is also working and training with light response teams - "above ground responders" funded and managed by councils and territorial authorities.
The Edgecumbe flooding in April highlighted the new arrangement, McGill said, with light response teams using USAR equipment for rapid damage assessments.
"This joint process makes for a much more timely and efficient process," McGill said.
"Light teams can triage the incident with rapid damage assessments, identifying highest risk structures in the crucial first few hours following an earthquake."
A new national response plan says duty staff must remain on duty until they are relieved, while crews will continue to dispatch calls from communication centres until a command point is established on the ground.
Regional Co-ordination Centres (RCC) across the country have been standardised.
Technology has also improved in recent years, with the Fire Service's rapid damage assessment tool, developed with the Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council, allowing crews to feed information in live time back to the National Co-ordination Centre and National Crisis Management Centre which "triages" the incident for NZFS and other agencies.
It helped relay drone footage showing people in their flooded Edgecumbe homes back to the command centre.
In March 2015 the New Zealand USAR team gained its "heavy" classification from the UN after a 72-hour live exercise, which allows them to deploy overseas and learn from other events and makes it easier for international teams to come here and help.
More joint training with police and other emergency partners has been done to increase knowledge of just who becomes the incident controller, and to "ensure it is well understood who does what, when, and who is in control".
When quakes have struck Seddon, Wellington and Kaikoura in recent years, an inter-agency Emergency Operation Centre has been set up. It's become standard practice for major incidents.
Executive officers, many of whom came under fire for failing to step up in 2011, now must complete tactical and strategic command courses so they have "clear understanding, confidence and capability to lead in major emergencies".
They've all been given "command cases" too, which include command and control boards, jerkins with different roles, log books, phone chargers and satellite boxes in case mobile coverage is down.
In October 2012 an independent review of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Response to the February 22 quake made 108 recommendations on what could be done better in future emergency responses, including greater co-operation between different central and local government agencies and emergency services.
Civil Defence says the "vast majority" of recommendations have been "actioned".
Police have spent the past four years investigating the CTV Building collapse and seeing whether any individuals face criminal charges. A decision is imminent.
Lessons learned?
Nigel Hampton, Cvetanov's lawyer. Photo / John Kirk-Anderson. The Press
During the inquest into the deaths of the eight King's Education School for English Language students on the CTV Building's third floor who survived the collapse but could not be rescued alive, Dr Tamara Cvetanova's widower, Alec Cvetanov, wanted the world to take lessons from the tragedy.
"I want . . . all the rescue services in New Zealand to learn from Tamara's death so that somebody else does not die in similar circumstances in the future, here or abroad," he said.
His lawyer at the inquest, Nigel Hampton, QC, was concerned by what he sees as some key omissions in the Fire Service's post-quake actions, but said: "Unfortunately, the proof of the pudding is in the eating."
Hampton questioned whether joint training exercises between the Fire Service, the Defence Force and Air New Zealand had been carried out.
There had been none before the Canterbury quakes, and when February 22 struck it was discovered that the USAR gear on its pallets would not fit inside the RNZAF aircraft and had to be repacked and checked again, causing further delays.
It was also found there was insufficient space to accommodate both the USAR people and their gear, which meant they were split up.
"A team without gear is pretty much of little or no use," Hampton said.
He is also worried at the lack of any mention of the "imperative need" for incident control points (ICP) at scenes like the one at CTV building collapse.
Training also should go beyond executive officers, he said, as the first and most senior officer at a disaster scene must establish an ICP and, at least, an interim incident controller, which didn't happen at CTV and had "disastrous consequences".
Dr Maan Alkaisi, whose wife, Dr Maysoon Abbas, 61, was killed in the CTV Building, said it was "really comforting and pleasing" to hear that several of the key failings on February 22 had now been addressed.
While he had no criticism of frontline staff, his major disappointment was the delays in getting USAR teams to the CTV site.
"That was very disappointing and I am pleased that people have not forgotten what happened and that lessons do appear to have been learned," he said.
"We all hope that if something does happen in the future, we are much better prepared than last time."
