Auckland floods: Editorial - what have we learned?

Paturoa Rd in Auckland's Titirangi was badly damaged by floods during Auckland Anniversary weekend in January 2023. Photo / Brett Phibbs

OPINION

Every Aucklander has a story from January 27, 2023.

Some were braving the chaotic holiday traffic leading into Auckland Anniversary weekend but being stonewalled by flooded motorways.

Some were among the thousands of revellers escaping from the Elton John concert that never was.

Or worse, some were swimming, kayaking or boating away from their soggy homes.

All were experiencing the wettest day in the city’s history.

But what if a flood of that magnitude were to happen again? What’s changed to prevent such widespread damage? The short answer in some cases is: nothing.

Flooding in Auckland on January 27, 2023.

A year on from that fateful day, which left four dead, Nick Vigar, head of planning for Auckland Council’s Healthy Waters department, says should the city suffer a similar weather event, it would likely swamp thousands of homes and businesses again.

Fifty-thousand to be exact. That’s the number of properties lying in overland flow paths and flood plains.

There is simply nowhere for the water to go.

A buyout process on 700 of those homes in the flood plains could take months, years or even a decade, depending on the house. And most residents don’t have the luxury of abandoning ship to build or buy a new property on higher ground while they wait for the money to come in.

There are 12 major projects underway across the city, funded with the help of a $800 million recovery programme, that are similar to a redevelopment in Northcote that kept much of the suburb’s homes and its town centre dry on January 27.

The Greenslade Reserve sports field drained 12 million litres of floodwater in just a matter of hours during the storm. It is part of a Kāinga Ora redevelopment that built 1700 new homes but also “daylighted” stormwater pipes so the water ran through an improved Awataha Stream and “green” pathway of plants and lawns rather than pipes.

But again, the new projects could be years away.

But there have been other, quicker fixes in the works that may not save those 50,000 homes but could at least warn residents to get to higher ground. And it all comes down to communication and what lessons have been learned from the lack of it on January 27.

The disconnect between every level of executive management from the various authorities involved in the emergency response that night was striking.

Between 4pm and 5pm, more than 50 council Hydrotel alarms were triggered by heavy rainfall.

At 5.07pm, a Fire and Emergency NZ (Fenz) press release said “every fire truck in Auckland is responding to the priority calls” and it was responding to more than 400 emergency calls.

One senior firefighter the Herald spoke to said by the time he got on shift at 6pm, Fenz was at capacity and only responding to life-threatening calls.

This should have been the criteriion to advise the mayor to declare a state of emergency there and then. But it wasn’t declared until 9.27pm.

Fenz Auckland regional manager Ron Devlin said he didn’t recommend declaring a state of emergency at 6pm because it “didn’t feel at that time it was needed”.

All the evidence suggests this is wrong. The communication between frontline firefighters and Fenz management and Auckland Emergency Management (AEM) was lacking.

Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown was criticised after the floods. Photo / Angus Dreaver / RNZ

Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown was also accused of being too slow to react to the seriousness of the storm.

Neither Brown nor his staff were on the AKGEOC (Auckland Civil Defence and Emergency Management Team) email distribution list so were not receiving crucial updates.

Mayoral staff were understood to be “screaming” at their computers searching for internally sent email alerts and updates.

And in an investigation by Tom Dillane published today, the mayor claims no one from AEM phoned him - that no one in the team even had his number.

A damning review of the floods conducted by former police commissioner Mike Bush found a “system failure” of leadership in the first 12 hours of the response in which “much of the damage was done” before council or Brown had taken any action.

A key finding of the report was that “senior leaders underestimated the importance of their visible leadership roles”.

The comms from Fenz and AEM management to the mayor were lacking. The mayor was lacking in not being more demanding in seeking it out. Of demanding it on the night.

The mayor has largely maintained he was blameless on the night but did, however, offer this small concession in today’s story: “Let’s hope we all learn to do better next time, me included.”

The council has said it has now set up an improved standard operating procedure that on-duty staff and leaders can follow if they find themselves in unexpected emergencies, thus speeding up council’s response.

And council CEO Phil Wilson, who was in the mayor’s office on the night of the floods, is confident the logistical process that led to a delayed declaration of a state of emergency would no longer exist if a weather event of similar magnitude were to happen today.

“ ... I think at the time, what we failed to appreciate was the importance of declaration [of a state of emergency] for the purposes of communicating the severity of this to the community and its symbolic value,” says Wilson.

“We would handle it differently now and have different operating procedures for that as a direct consequence of that, and the advice to the mayor would be different.”

With an “upper tropospheric cyclonic vortex” forecast to arrive on our shores by early next week, and Tropical Cyclone Kirrily declared off Australia’s east coast, the threat of extreme weather in the Pacific is obviously not going away.

The city of Auckland hopes Wilson is right.