OPINION:
Yesterday began badly for Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown. The tennis game he had planned was rained off.
We know this because playing tennis was the reason he gave Tom Day, a producer at Today FM, for declining a request for an interview that morning.
It rained all day, as we know. The torrents were far greater than predicted and every fire truck in the city was said to be out. Houses and shops were flooded, streets turned into rivers. As the day unfolded, it became clear we had a massive emergency on our hands. By early evening, everyone knew it.
Three people are confirmed dead; there may be more.
The mayor responded with … what? Where was he all day yesterday?
We heard nothing from him. For much of the day, we heard nothing from Auckland Emergency Management (AEM), either. AEM is the council agency with responsibility for co-ordinating civil defence in the city.
AEM’s first statement was issued at 6pm. Duty controller Andrew Clark urged people “to be vigilant and if you live in a flood prone area, be prepared to evacuate”.
Mayor Brown was also reported to have asked “residents affected by flooding to stay safe and take advice from emergency responders”.
He added: “We want to make sure that all residents are kept informed, and emergency services are able to reach those who are most vulnerable and at risk as quickly as possible. Do not put yourself at risk”.
Another AEM statement was issued at 9.50pm, but it contained no information from Brown.
Then, at 10.17pm, Brown announced he had declared a state of local emergency. He issued a photo of himself in an apparently empty office, mug of tea at his elbow, signing a document.
Then he fronted a media conference.
“There has been some speculation I could have acted sooner, but I couldn’t have,” he said.
What did he say to Aucklanders disappointed in the lack of communication?
Brown thought for a while, and said: “We have been waiting here and picking up on reports from the field all evening long and I rely on the professionals to tell me exactly what steps to take, and I follow those exactly”.
This was his first big emergency event. How had he found it?
“I think everybody finds it traumatic and difficult,” he said, and paused again.
“And you have to take your role seriously. And my role isn’t to rush out with buckets. It’s to be here ensuring that the centre is well organised.”
But is that what he did? No emergency texts to affected neighbourhoods were sent out and Brown revealed on RNZ this morning that he did not know this.
When the emergency was declared, only one evacuation centre had been established.
Another two were announced after midnight. But in flooded Māngere, not served by those centres, councillors Alf Filipaina and Josephine Bartley were calling desperately for help.
Brown used the RNZ interview largely to defend his own role. He said he’d done nothing wrong.
He deflected criticism of Auckland’s apparent lack of preparedness by wondering if Wellington would do any better.
A few hours later, RNZ ran an interview with Emergency Management Minister Kieran McAnulty in which he revealed Government officials would be taking over the communications.
What went wrong? The “speculation” that Brown and the AEM team should have declared an emergency sooner came from several of his own councillors. And from National Party leader Christopher Luxon, who said they should have acted “much quicker”.
It’s too soon to know if that’s true, but it will certainly be the subject of an inquiry.
It’s not too soon for something else to be clear: The mayor was missing in action.
Why wasn’t he out and about? Why was he, in effect, absent all day and most of the night?
“Trusting the professionals” at council is a new line for Wayne Brown. He won an election by excoriating the professionals in charge of the City Rail Link, Auckland Transport, Ports of Auckland and other council agencies.
Why was this big storm suddenly so different? How did he not know important details of the response? How was he not able to explain what they’d done when, and why?
Brown spoke to the public this afternoon, during a media conference led by the Prime Minister. He focused on a defence of his role emergency services’ roles and appeared to think the key issue was the timing of the emergency declaration.
But it wasn’t. Auckland went through yesterday and most of last night hearing very little from anyone. If they didn’t think it was an emergency until 10pm, why were they not even reassuring the public at regular intervals?
McAnulty said today that communications should be half hourly. “Even when there’s nothing new to say, we have to keep talking to people,” he said. That is true.
The biggest worry is this: Brown has not grasped that it’s the job of political leaders to lead from the front, visibly, in times of crisis.
Think Bob Parker in his orange raincoat during the Christchurch earthquakes. John Key after Pike River, Jacinda Ardern over and over again.
In a crisis, political leaders are supposed to soak up people’s fears. It’s their job to reassure those who have lost everything that they are supported, that society will stand with them and help them.
That they are not forgotten or unimportant or alone.
It’s what they’re there for: To help us believe that empathy and compassion and hope bind us together.
In this country, after all we’ve been through, who doesn’t know that?
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