People watching coastal inundation at Matakatia Bay near Little Manly on Whangaparaoa at high tide as cyclone Gabrielle hits New Zealand. Photo / Dean Purcell
People watching coastal inundation at Matakatia Bay near Little Manly on Whangaparaoa at high tide as cyclone Gabrielle hits New Zealand. Photo / Dean Purcell
Opinion by Mark Blackham
OPINION:
Weather hazard forecasting is better than it’s ever been. We knew this cyclone was coming at least five days before it hit. We had a good sense of the water coming with it. We understood what would happen to the water landing in some of the rivers and someof the catchments. We couldn’t stop the weather, but we knew enough to get ourselves and precious movable things out of the way.
Yet, it is apparent that we didn’t get sufficiently out of the way. For this, the authorities must shoulder the blame as authorities are extraordinarily poor at a central part of their job – the science of communication.
MetService warnings were issued then upgraded to red and more areas added as Cyclone Gabrielle moved southwards towards New Zealand. Photo / MetService, File
In response to this criticism, politicians and bureaucrats will claim they made every effort. And they did, but the effort was almost incredibly dumb.
They did not account for prevailing public scepticism and emergency weariness, nor the cry-wolf effect of the long run-up of warnings. They presented warnings in earnestly dull officialese, and without facts to help people make decisions. They made over-generalised recommendations to stay at home or evacuate.
Let’s look at those more closely.
The warnings took no account of the context. There has been a long history of over-warning about hazards that didn’t eventuate. A study my company did in 2017 found that people are more likely to disbelieve future warnings when disaster did not eventuate from earlier warnings.
The Gabrielle warnings immediately followed the mess-up over the Auckland Anniversary weekend floods.
When Wayne Brown renewed the State of Emergency for another seven days and said “prepare for the worst” it looked to almost all of us that he was over-compensating for under-warning about Auckland.
The warnings started at least as early as Thursday, February 9.
TV1 News reported that the cyclone would “bullseye” the upper North Island on Sunday and Monday.
A MetService wave map predicted waves of up to 8m (dark brown areas) off the northwest tip of Northland as Cyclone Gabrielle passes through. Photo / MetService, File
On Friday, a prescient article in the NZ Herald reported predictions of one of the worst storms ever to hit New Zealand. The story forecast extensive damage over five days from 300mm of rain and 150 km/h winds. People were warned to stock up on supplies.
On Saturday, RNZ reported that people in Northland and Coromandel should “self-evacuate” ahead of the cyclone hitting that night. People did react. The NZ Herald reported on supermarket queues and empty shelves. Managers of infrastructure and commercial and public facilities closed up, closed down, and protected equipment.
Queues in Countdown at Westgate on February 11 after warnings were issued about Cyclone Gabrielle. Photo / Dean Purcell, File
Only, the storm didn’t hit. It wasn’t until Sunday night that the Far North experienced gale-force winds and rain, which caused slips, fallen trees, and power cuts. Whangārei had 348mm of rain in 24 hours. This was bad weather for summer but, still, nothing extraordinary.
The early start to warnings about Gabrielle began to have the reverse psychological effect. Kate Hawkesby spoke for many when she said on Monday, February 13: “I’m just wondering where this cyclone is?” She was castigated by the clever-set, but this didn’t change the discrepancy between what authorities were saying and what people were experiencing.
Flooding on Walton St in Whangārei as Cyclone Gabrielle hit Northland. Photo / Michael Cunningham, File
When the cyclone hit on Monday, with a force and breadth barely experienced in living memory, we were prepared… but we weren’t prepared. People were still in homes where floodwater reached almost the peak of their roofs, or that were destroyed or damaged by slips. Cars and trucks were travelling on the roads. Power, phone and facilities were damaged, with no fuel and material stored so they could be restarted.
Examining the delivery of the warnings in the days prior to Monday, February 13, I cannot discern anything commensurate with the extraordinary scale of the cyclone impact.
A car rests in a destroyed orchard at Puketapu, west of Napier, after being carried there by floodwaters. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The words, tone and demeanour of politicians and authorities was flat, careful, and predictable. In a press conference on Thursday, February 9, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins ran through the obvious preparations people could make. This liturgy was recited endlessly by authorities over the following days. No one deviated from the script in content or tone.
Someone needed to.
People take their communication cues from delivery more than content. The warnings of the worst storm this century were delivered by people who appeared to have no sense that this was actually the case, or of the extraordinary nature of such a thing.
Studies of hazard warnings show that people need information that gives them a sense of what to expect. I don’t know what 300mm of water looks like, but I know, or can imagine what rivers breaking banks and flooded streets look like.
Mark Blackham. Photo / Supplied
The studies also show that people need specific advice, not broad generalisations. Advice to stay at home or self-evacuate are not useful unless they are accompanied by information about thresholds at which this should occur (such as wind and rain levels), and precisely where to go and what is available there.
Experts have been saying that New Zealand should prepare for more of this sort of weather. In that case, we all have a responsibility then to learn how to prepare, react and cope.
Authorities must now school up on how to discern the difference between bad weather and emergency weather, and act and warn accordingly.
Mark Blackham is a director of BlacklandPR, a Wellington-based public relations consultancy.
