Photo / George Heard
Frustration is growing among some Auckland residents at delays in getting back into their evacuated apartments, with one group saying they warned the Government close to three years ago about the risk posed by a historic tower.
They say that - with no date yet given as to when they can return home - the ongoing evacuation is an over-reaction and have asked to be let back in right away.
Authorities earlier ordered their immediate evacuation during Cyclone Gabrielle on Monday, saying severe gales could topple the Colonial Ammunition Company Shot Tower on Normandy Rd in Mt Eden.
Residents in about 50 apartments in three complexes were given less than one hour to leave their homes and have been unable to return since – apart from one 30-minute window this morning.
One mother has also reportedly complained Auckland Council staff entered her home during the evacuation and picked up her three-month-old baby in a bid to make her leave faster.
However, Craig Hobbs – director of regulatory services at Auckland Council – denied the incident happened that way.
He also said he erred on the side of caution on Monday when ordering the evacuation and is upset by the conduct of body corporates at two of the complexes - he plans to formally complain about them.
However, Sharon O’Sullivan from About Body Corporates at 22 Normanby Rd said she has been asking the Government to do something about the tower’s safety since May 2020.
She accused authorities of doing nothing for close to three years, and now going to the opposite extreme and overstating the risk.
“I feel there’s not enough attention on getting my people back in their homes,” she said.
“We’re very distressed and a lot of them don’t have a lot of money, and there’s no support.”
O’Sullivan said she knows the council is stretched thin working around the city and west coast and that the nation’s focus should be on hard-hit regions like Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne.
However, that’s why recent “red tape” was frustrating. The issue should be solved quickly so everyone can move on to more important matters, she said.
Hobbs said the tower’s heritage status and debate over who owns it was at the heart of the matter.
Engineering consultants had assessed the tower’s safety since Cyclone Gabrielle.
However, whether or not it could be demolished depended on the Minister for Building, he said.
“We’ve been working through hoping we would get a response from the Minister for Building - who makes the final decision because it is a Heritage-listed structure - on whether it can come down or not, and we still don’t have that notification yet,” he said.
“We’ve requested it, haven’t had it.”
He said the 109-year-old tower is a Class 1 heritage structure and was originally owned by the developer that built the apartment complex surrounding it.
However, that company went into liquidation around 2019, with the liquidators later relinquishing ownership of the tower and land because there was not enough value in selling it.
Hobbs said that in 99 per cent of such cases, ownership passes to the central Government.
“We’ve been working with Treasury for a while now around ownership because Treasury is saying that there was a step in the process that was missed, which means they have no liability or no responsibility,” he said.
“Auckland Council is saying ‘Well, it’s not ours’, so the thing’s been sitting now for some years.”
“It hasn’t been maintained for about 20 years, it’s had no work done on it, and it’s sitting in this limbo.”
He said the council were alerted to structural issues with the tower in November last year when a “visual” inspection was undertaken.
Then on Monday, a team was sent out to inspect it during Cyclone Gabrielle.
“I had to make a call on safety with the junior controller, and we erred on the side of caution and evacuated everything within a 25-metre radius, which is basically where the tower would fall if it came down,” he said.
However, O’Sullivan said she had been trying to get someone to take ownership of the tower since May 2020 after concerns were raised about debris falling off because of corrosion.
She first tried to go through the Government’s Treasury department for about nine months but got nowhere, she claimed.
Then she applied to the council under the Building Act, and eventually heard back from them last November.
She said she has photographic proof the corrosion damage now causing concern among engineers is in the same condition as it was in 2020.
She called on authorities to move past the red tape and either demolish the tower quickly or brace it with supports so residents can move back in.
She was also frustrated Heritage NZ now needed to be consulted, when she claimed she had tried to get them involved in the issue a long time ago with no luck.
Syliva Duda is one of the evacuated residents. She has had to move out to her parents’ home with her partner and six-month-old baby.
She understood many others were doing it tougher, but said it was frustrating the Government had known about the problem for a long time and done nothing.
She feared hundreds of dollars worth of food in her freezer could have perished and said her husband had evacuated with just one pair of pants.
Others from the complex were less fortunate.
“There’s a lot of families and a lot of immigrants who don’t have families here that they can stay with,” Duda said.
One neighbour with a three-month-old baby had been forced to stay on the floor at a friend’s house, she said.
However, there was no room for her husband to stay at the same house.
“So, families are being separated,” Duda said.
She also said one of her neighbours was crying during a group Zoom call with residents yesterday, claiming Auckland Council staff had gone into her bedroom, picked up her baby and put it into a capsule to speed up the evacuation process.
However, the council’s Hobbs denied this.
He said there was only one occasion in which staff entered an apartment during the evacuation.
He said the staff member was not a compliance officer but a trained welfare person, and they only entered at the request of a resident asking for help.
Hobbs said he was ultimately unhappy with the approach taken by two of the apartment complexes’ body corporate contractors.
“I’m really upset about the way that they’ve approached this - not working with Council, but working against us,” he said.
He acknowledged the council’s communication could have been better, but said his team had also busy dealing with more than 2000 significantly damaged homes across the city.
But O’Sullivan said her only focus was getting people back into their homes as soon as possible.
Emergency services were called to the scene about 8.30pm.