PM says NZ has to prepare for more frequent floods

1.00pm

New Zealand has to prepare for more frequent and extreme floods says Prime Minister Helen Clark.

A state of emergency remained in force in parts of the Bay of Plenty after two days of earthquakes and floods, which have claimed two lives, and caused damage expected to run into the "tens of millions".

Helen Clark and Civil Defence Minister George Hawkins visited the flood-hit region yesterday - the second large flood to hit the North Island in less than six months.

Helen Clark last night said the disasters were not just a matter of coincidence.

"It tells us that our climate is becoming much more erratic. It is most unusual to get events of this scale within a few months of each other," she said.

"All the predictions are that we are moving into an era of much more unpredictable and extreme weather and it may be that for the medium term our regional councils will have to look at their flood precautionary measures."

When rebuilding destroyed flood control attempts such as stopbanks, thought would have to be put in about building them to a higher standard, she said.

"Because it didn't hold this time."

The Government must take a stronger line on climate change factors and unsustainable land use to "mitigate the effects of the catastrophic flooding and extreme weather events", the Green Party said.

Green MP Ian Ewen-Street said climate change was a reality, and lessons that should have been learnt from past events had not been.

"Weather bombs that have hit New Zealand in the last 20 years should have provided a strategic plan to deal with weather events," he said.

"Sadly, we still have none."

Solutions lay in a shorter-term reforestation of marginal land in the agriculture sector and in long-term measures to put brakes on climate change, he said.

"We are reaping the cost of a century of the clear-felling of marginal land to be used for pasture," he said.

"Rather than simply assisting farmers to recover only to the point of using their land again in an unsustainable way, any assistance package should be clearly tied to efforts to change their land use to include reforestation with indigenous species on marginal land."

Helen Clark yesterday showed the Government had learnt a political lesson on how to react to flooding.

The Government was criticised as reacting too slowly to February floods in the Manawatu and Rangitikei and was today determined to remove any hint of hesitancy in reacting to the weekend's flooding.

Cabinet quickly approved a package of assistance and said it would do all it could to help.

Helen Clark said the Bay of Plenty floods were comparable to the flooding in the lower North Island earlier in the year, though covering less land.

"In the affected areas it is clearly as bad as that, but its covering a lot less territory than the Manawatu/Rangitikei/South Taranaki disaster, but certainly we have seen a great deal of flooding," she said.

Helen Clark said the forces of nature had created some tragic sights around Brian's Beach, near Opotiki, where a mudslide had killed a woman when it hit her home.

"Where the slip came down, it just tossed a little house around like it was matchsticks and it clearly had enormous force behind it.

"The people next door said they thought the last pohutukawa moved from half away up the slope in three seconds to crush down the house. So it has been a very sudden and very traumatic event for people here."

- NZPA