Boats moored at the Tūtūkākā Marina were wrecked in the tsunami surge. A $2.5 million repair of the marina has started. Photo / Tania Whyte
Boats moored at the Tūtūkākā Marina were wrecked in the tsunami surge. A $2.5 million repair of the marina has started. Photo / Tania Whyte
Work has started on repairing Tūtūkākā Marina, which was badly damaged in January last year with the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai tsunami surge, that sank and wrecked boats and smashed infrastructure.
The major repair job is focused on building the marina back stronger, with the $2.5 million of work to becompleted by the end of May.
The marina’s management trust chair, John Healy, said work started in February with the rebuild of the damaged fuel berth at the facility’s entrance. Two new fuel pumps would finish off this work.
The surge that hit Tūtūkākā has resulted in more than $5.8 million of insurance claims, including from dozens of damaged boats.
The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano exploded underwater at 5.10pm on January 15, 2022, NZ time. Wave surges from Cyclone Cody were already affecting Tūtūkākā Harbour. The first tsunami action hit its marina in darkness at just after 9.30pm that day.
Healy said new heavy-grade steel piles had been used on the jetty to replace timber piles. Special heavy-duty steel hinge brackets had been used to strengthen the pontoons’ connections as well.
Ninety of the heavy-grade steel piles will be used around various damaged parts of the marina during the repair job and would go towards making the facility able to better withstand an even stronger tsunami surge.
Tūtūkākā Marina manager Dylan Lease said the tsunami had made the local community more aware of the dangers. More people had evacuation plans in place and were aware of phone alerts as an option for knowing about an approaching tsunami.
Tūtūkākā Marina’s tsunami siren is one of three locally and Northland Civil Defence spokesman Zachary Woods said Tūtūkākā tsunami siren provision was being updated as part of the region’s $6 million tsunami siren replacement programme.
Three Tūtūkākā Marina piers were wrecked when the Tongan tsunami hit the North in January last year
Northland’s existing first-generation 205 tsunami sirens - from Te Hapua near Cape Reinga to the south at Mangawhai on the east coast and Ruawai on the west coast - will gradually be replaced with 96 new Danish-made sirens.
Woods said Tūtūkākā was to be among the first cabs off the rank when it came to this work. A single siren would replace the current three in this location. The new tsunami siren’s location was still being worked on.
He said the community should not assume tsunami siren provision was going to decline because there were to be fewer sirens.
The new Danish sirens’ sound and functionality meant the network of 96 tsunami sirens across the North would perform better overall than the current 205-strong siren equivalent.
“They have a much greater sound coverage and can provide pre-programmed voice messaging as well as multi-tone siren sounds,” Woods said.
“... [they] have backup batteries and solar power and are activated separately from the mains power via the cellphone network or satellite.”
Woods said not needing to connect new sirens to mains power brought the opportunity for them to be placed closer to at-risk locations.
He said the new sirens’ extra functionality also meant Northland Civil Defence could narrow down tsunami alerting areas to specific locations if required, rather than the whole network of tsunami sirens being set off.
Northlanders can check out whether they live, work or play in a tsunami evacuation zone and plan their quickest evacuation route using interactive maps at www.nrc.govt.nz/evacuationzones
