Getting supplies to isolated communities was a challenge in the aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle. Photo / Paul Taylor
Getting supplies to isolated communities was a challenge in the aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle. Photo / Paul Taylor
The public are welcome at the Hawke’s Bay Civil Defence Emergency Management (HBCDEM) Group Joint Committee that will determine how they can participate in its review.
Joint Committee members are due to agree to terms of reference - at the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council (HBRC) offices on Monday- for an independent investigation into the performance of HBCDEM during the State of Emergency triggered by Cyclone Gabrielle.
The Joint Committee is made up of the region’s five mayors, council chief executives and HBRC chairwoman Hinewai Ormsby.
Among the cyclone response criticisms that have been levelled at HBCDEM is the extent to which people were left to fend for themselves.
Isabelle Crawshaw comes from a communications background. Yes, she and her husband farm in the Hawke’s Bay hinterland, but her expertise is more suited to the corporate world.
But by virtue of being the Kaweka Subdivision member for the Hastings District Council’s Rural Community Board, Crawshaw found herself thrust into the role of “hub leader for the Patoka area”.
Rightly or wrongly, Crawshaw assumed it would be those people trained in disaster relief, such as HBCDEM, who would be the ones co-ordinating the response.
Instead, like so many other Hawke’s Bay folk during - and in the two weeks following - Cyclone Gabrielle, she had to step up.
“As a community, we felt let down in terms of how difficult it was to get support and the breakdown in communications,” Crawshaw told Hawke’s Bay Today.
“It was tough, because every single person who came out to the community by helicopter or Unimog, you could tell they genuinely really cared about helping us and wanted to do something, but the system was broken.
“In the space of seven days, every single day we would have someone from Fenz [Fire and Emergency New Zealand], someone from the army arrive. But it would be a different person each time and they would ask the same questions and there were never any results from it.
“Where that communication was going back at CDEM, I have no idea. But the system was not set up or not working properly.”
The boss of the HBCDEM Group, Ian Macdonald, told the last Joint Committee meeting any review should be about absorbing lessons and building structures so that this region is more resilient in a disaster.
Macdonald was at pains to point out that any review should not be about apportioning blame.
Crawshaw readily accepts that disasters happen. She’s not criticising evacuation plans or the execution of rescues.
She’d just like to know why HBCDEM were unable to provide essential supplies to isolated communities - such as hers - and to make sure systems are in place to ensure things are different next time.
“We were essentially in a state of high anxiety and there was a high sense of urgency in dealing with people in the community who had serious issues. We were the only support mechanism to get them through and that was really hard,” said Crawshaw.
Supplies to the Hawke's Bay hinterland were plentiful after Cyclone Gabrielle, but fuel was rarely among them. Photo / Paul Taylor
Getting fuel across the Tūtaekurī River was the biggest issue for the 380 residents of Patoka. But there was also cancer medication that had to be sourced and delivered, dog food, all sorts of things.
“To have proper power at someone’s house - and by proper power I mean four to five hours a day of power - we needed 2000 litres of petrol a day and we were lucky to get 800 litres a week,’’ Crawshaw said.
Time and again, messages were sent to HBCDEM requesting fuel. The messages were delivered by satellite phone and email to Civil Defence staff, the army and Fenz.
Exasperated Napier resident Dan Tosswill said he eventually went to the HBCDEM’s distribution centre when his requests for fuel went unanswered.
Tosswill was going home at night to a warm bed and unscathed house, but a desire to help impacted friends saw him spend 10 days after the cyclone helping recovery efforts at Rissington Bridge.
That included being among the five people who waded into the swollen river to erect a flying fox to ferry supplies to the other side.
That came in handy on the day Tosswill turned up to 2000 litres of fuel, having sourced petrol cans, filled them and taken them out on the back of a trailer.
“That was just one guy using his brain,” Tosswill said.
Unison arrived with a generator to power the district that required 4000 litres of fuel a day to run. It supplied the fuel with regular fuel drops. Because access to the area was limited, the community had to play a part in refuelling it.
For people such as Crawshaw, there’s an enduring frustration of what happened in February and, hopefully, a lesson.
She feels there’s an inevitability to natural disasters in New Zealand that destroy bridges and isolate communities.
In Hawke’s Bay’s case, Crawshaw doesn’t believe there were the staff or resources to cope with it.
She’d like more responsibility to lie with NEMA (National Emergency Management Agency) rather than see HBCDEM and this region’s councils trying to respond with limited assets.
“The people we were speaking to and the people that we met, all of them - hand on heart - genuinely cared about trying to get us what we needed,” Crawshaw said.
“But the system was just not set up in a way where they could actually do anything to help us.”
Hamish Bidwell joined Hawke’s Bay Today in 2022 and works out of the Hastings newsroom.
* This story has been updated to clarify that Unison did supply regular fuel for the generator they provided to the Patoka community. Access issues meant the community had to refuel the generator using that supply.
