The widow of a man swept away in floodwaters during Auckland Anniversary floods believes an emergency mobile alert would have saved her husband’s life, a coronial inquest has heard.
Father and grandfather Dave Young was one of four men who died when record-breaking rainfall flooded parts of Auckland and Waikato on January 27, 2023.
Young died in the rural north Waikato town of Onewhero when he was swept away by floodwaters on Allen and Eyre Rd.
Jane Glover, counsel assisting bereft families, said: “Mrs Young considers that it would have been helpful for an [emergency mobile alert] EMA to be issued ... and that the absence of an EMA caused her and her husband to go out into the weather oblivious of the situation”.
Julian Snowball, Waikato Civil Defence Emergency Management [Waikato CDEM] group controller, was cross-examined by Glover and counsel assisting Coroner Erin Woolley, Matthew Mortimer Wang.
Snowball said an EMA would have gone out to too wide an area where warnings would not have been necessary. Glover questioned this, given mobile alerts can be sent to specific areas.
Snowball said sending a mobile alert to a specific geographic area was more difficult in rural areas where there were fewer people and fewer cell towers.
He said the Waikato CDEM knew there was significant flooding happening, “so the potential for an emergency was there in terms of the severity ... but probably the most appropriate thing to do was to close the road [from where Young was swept away], not issue an EMA”.
“An EMA wasn’t sent out because it was not a widespread event [the flooding in Onewhero], but localised,” Snowball said.
“You couldn’t target a specific area in Onewhero without EMA overspill. I am pretty confident it could have gone to Tuakau and Port Waikato.”
He also said he believed the threshold for issuing a mobile alert was not met, and “even with the benefit of hindsight, I don’t think it was met”.
He conceded to Glover that the thresholds for issuing mobile alerts could be reviewed.
However, he questioned whether there would be appetite for it from the public, pointing to frustration from some just under a month ago when emergency alerts were issued early in the morning due to a tsunami threat from a magnitude 8.0 earthquake in Russia.
Snowball said emergency mobile alerts were also different to usual communications channels. Under cross-examination from Mortimer Wang, Snowball raised the possibility Waikato CDEM relied too much on using social media site Facebook.
“We talk about Facebook a lot. But Facebook is too easy a tool to revert to. It doesn’t mean people are going to read it. We put [information] on as a catch-all, hoping we have got an audience. But Facebook might not be the most appropriate mechanism for delivering that messaging. You have to look at multiple channels,” he told the inquest.
“In the moment [of an emergency], there is an obligation on us [Waikato CDEM] to boost messaging from lead agencies such as MetService, boosting those forecasts, assessing forecasts and undertaking risk assessment. That goes to local authorities, and they should know the best way to communicate that risk assessment and where.”
He also admitted there were gaps in the information Waikato CDEM was receiving from police, St John, and Fire and Emergency from on the ground.
“Decisions are made or not made [by Waikato CDEM] based on what you know.
“There were things the Waikato CDEM did not know at the time, or things they were told that were wrong,” he said.
“I accept there are gaps in terms of the information that was provided.
“We rely on information coming from other agencies. If you started getting a number of calls from emergency services, that would be an indicator of something happening,” Snowball said.
“There was no request [from emergency services] for support, no request for co-ordination or additional resources. My assumption is the emergency services saw no value in co-ordination from the district council or Waikato CDEM.”
Families of the victims are yet to speak at the inquest.
Raphael Franks is an Auckland-based reporter who covers business, breaking news and local stories from Tāmaki Makaurau. He joined the Herald as a Te Rito cadet in 2022.
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