Larry Foster
There is a Civil Defence Emergency Management (CDEM) meeting on Thursday at 9am in the chambers of Awarua.
The CDEM team play a very important role in our district, and part of that is the Tairawhiti Civil Defence Emergency Management Group Plan. Under the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002, the council is required to have a group plan that is reviewed and updated every five years.
The current plan was approved in September 2016 and is due for review by September 2021. There are, however, changes needed to the plan due to some legislative changes to the CDEM Act in 2016 to bring recovery efforts more to the fore in group plans.
The council also recently conducted an independent internal review of CDEM activity, which identified several recommendations for improvements. The recommendations were prioritised into immediate needs, medium-term needs and longer-term needs.
Some of the changes can be completed as minor amendments to group plans, without consultation, and some will need to go through a consultation process in October.
Council officers are working their way through responding to the high-priority and immediate needs which are about clarifying roles and responsibilities, clarifying and embedding reporting lines, ensuring better integration with council activities, developing strong and enduring relationships, and establishing a strategic planning framework.
The position of group controller is a key role under the CDEM Act. It is held by John Clarke, QSO, JP, who has extensive experience in this position.
After many years of commitment to the role, Mr Clarke has indicated that he wishes to hand over group controller responsibilities to someone new.
The intention is to train a team of alternate group controllers — competent, confident and willing individuals to both lead our future responses and to replace Mr Clarke at the end of the year.
There are eight alternate group controllers, six of them experienced council staff, one is a NZTA representative and the other a very experienced and past group controller, Patrick Willock.
The voluntary efforts of our Community Link co-ordinators and deputies are outstanding and so vital to any response in Tairawhiti.
They are: Hal Hovell and John Haerewa (Te Araroa); James Palmer, Hori Hern and Dan Kawhia (Waiapu); Greg Shelton and Nori Parata (Uawa); newly appointed Gary Howse and Fred Barwick (Ormond). Ian Smith and Dave Pikia (Waikohu). Areas including Manutuke, Muriwai, Gisborne Urban and Whangara will be approached to reinvigorate their respective networks.
These volunteers play a very critical role in Civil Defence Emergency Management in Tairawhiti and are very important to their communities, particularly in times of need.
After the CDEM meeting, we will workshop the Tairawhiti Resilience Plan. The aim of the plan is to ensure our communities understand the hazards and risks facing them and can build their capacity to respond to and recover from them.
Council officers propose a community-led approach by getting group members input to identify stakeholders to engage with and risks to be managed.
Resilience planning is a tool to encourage and enable communities to achieve acceptable levels of risk. It involves working closely with communities who will bear the brunt of natural hazard and climate change impacts, so they can plan for all aspects of CDEM — reduction, readiness, response and recovery.
Currently, CDEM plans are focused on individual hazards and are not spatially based. Taking a geographic approach through resilience planning with communities will put people at the forefront of CDEM activities.
There will be local meetings and targeted engagement in separate communities.