‘Could have made a difference’: Hawke’s Bay regional councillor slams failed flood-warning system

Emergency services and helpers rescue numerous people caught up in Cyclone Gabrielle along Links Road near Taradale during the cyclone. Photo / NZME

By Hamish Bidwell

The Hawke’s Bay Regional Council promises its flood warning system will soon be “as bulletproof as we can make it’’.

But that won’t change what people experienced on February 14, according to regional councillor Neil Kirton.

Telemetry from dozens of Hawke’s Bay Regional Council (HBRC) rainfall and water level monitoring sites failed during Cyclone Gabrielle due to the absence of a backup power supply at the Kahuranaki repeater station.

The HBRC sold the site and equipment in 2011, which HBRC chair Hinewai Ormsby told Wednesday’s cyclone recovery committee meeting “boggles my mind’’.

The regional council has resolved to resume ownership and maintenance of equipment at the repeater station, which it has been leasing from a communications provider.

Environmental information manager for HBRC, Peter Davis, said the Kahuranaki repeater station was also used to relay Civil Defence communication.

The repeater station’s back-up generator broke in the early hours of February 14, once mains power was lost at about 12.30am. Battery power was then tried, which failed too.

That meant telemetry from 54 sites went offline at about 1am on February 14.

“I’m thinking in terms of the people that have come to me in recent times, particularly in Esk [Valley] and Dartmoor, who were standing on roofs and were in roof spaces and could’ve been called [to evacuate] earlier as a result of this,’’ Kirton said, at Wednesday’s cyclone recovery committee meeting.

“Our system failed because someone didn’t check to see we had a battery in play and that there was good maintenance going on. Is that what we tell the public today?’’

“That’s the truth, really,’’ Davis replied.

The HBRC’s integrated catchment management group manager Iain Maxwell said lessons have been learned from February’s weather event and that the system would be more “bulletproof’' in the future.

That would start, Davis added, by HBRC actually maintaining and monitoring the equipment themselves.

At the time of the cyclone, Davis said the HBRC was not responsible for ensuring the repeater station was in working order.

“That’s fine, but it’s our system. I’m astounded by that, quite frankly,’’ said Kirton.

He added it was now his job to ask difficult questions on behalf of the public.

“We get down to the people that were on their rooftops, were in their roof spaces and some died. That’s a really sad situation and I’m greatly saddened to know potentially - [and] potentially only - that an earlier warning could have made a difference,’’ Kirton said.

The public placed its confidence in the HBRC, he said, to ensure the appropriate systems were in place to mitigate danger during natural disasters.

The full HBRC will further discuss the telemetry failure at a meeting on August 28. The telemetry failure was identified in two independent reports, which HBRC chief executive Nic Peet would now be fed into broader reviews of Cyclone Gabrielle flooding and the performance of the Hawke’s Bay Civil Defence Emergency Management Group.