A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
Opinion
Contrary to what a correspondent said on Thursday’s opinion page, there has not been an external audit of council and Civil Defence actions during Cyclone Gabrielle.
An independent third party was commissioned to compile an event timeline, which runs from February 4 through to February 19 (the cyclone began
affecting Tairāwhiti on the 13th).
It doesn’t include any judgement on council and Civil Defence actions, as was suggested by the correspondent — that is something people can assess for themselves, thanks to the actions having been independently verified and collated alongside events over those 16 days in the clear and easy-to-follow timeline.
A short introduction to the seven-page timeline says it “provides an account of the key milestones, decisions and coordination efforts of the Tairāwhiti Civil Defence Emergency Management, and their emergency management partners, in the Readiness, Response and immediate Recovery phases”. It also references the devastating effects on the region and the declaration of a National State of Emergency for only the third time ever on February 14.
In its media release about the timeline, issued on June 2, the council described it as a “forensic-level dive into logs, records and data sources, presenting a clear run sheet of how the regional readiness phase is rolled out”.
