Heather du plessis allan talks with Wayne Brown on Auckland floods and preparation for Cyclone Gabrielle. Video / Newstalk ZB
In a non-descript, grey office block in Auckland’s CBD, the battle against a furious storm is being waged by people staring at desktop computers.
The Auckland Emergency Management “bunker” is an office floor on the second storey of the old Auckland Council building.
The control room has none of the Cold War intrigue of the emergency bunker under Wellington’s Beehive. There are four iron-doored, walk-in safes around the office but they are used for storing stationery rather than shelter from natural disasters.
This afternoon, dozens of staff from various agencies were co-ordinating the emergency response to Cyclone Gabrielle, which was hovering near Great Barrier Island.
Officials were working in 12-hour shifts. Takeaway meal containers were stacked high in the kitchen. A New Zealand Fire Service liaison was making a strong, black coffee at 4pm. In every room, there were live images of the swirling eye of the storm.
A group of building assessors were in a huddle, talking about their plan for checking storm-damaged buildings tomorrow. On a computer nearby was the toll from the floods two weeks ago: 288 red-stickered homes.
There was initially just a small team in this office when the unprecedented flooding ground Auckland to a halt on January 27. This time, having seen the cyclone coming for days, a full-scale response is taking place. And its leaders are quietly confident.
“We’re in a really good position,” said Auckland Emergency Management controller Mace Ward, who is working from a board room at one end of the floor. Aucklanders have stocked up on food, water, batteries, sandbags and stayed home.
“It feels like a more controlled situation,” Ward said. “People have really taken this storm seriously. And it is a serious storm.”
Mace Ward, Auckland Emergency Management controller. Photo / Dean Purcell
He spends the day talking to first responders on the ground - fire, police, ambulance, search and rescue, power and lines companies - to get a broad picture of the main issues and deciding where attention is needed.
Over the last 24 hours, his team has watched Cyclone Gabrielle engulf Northland, and Great Barrier Island. Great Barrier, living up to its name, had protected some of Auckland from the howling southeasterlies.
The concern so far had mostly been on coastal inundation on the North Island’s east coast. Ward pulls up photographs on his Ipad of Orewa Beach, where the white sand has washed away and left ugly true roots exposed. “These are places that people loved,” Ward said.
Tomorrow, the wind was expected to swing around to southwesterlies around 9am. “People who haven’t had the wind … should expect to not miss out on some pain,” said deputy controller Rachel Kelleher, who has been one of the public faces of the emergency response.
“No one gets a get out of jail free card in terms of avoiding the impacts in some way.”
Unlike the last storm in Auckland two weeks ago, the main concern this time was high winds rather than flooding.
“Those winds, as they pick up from the southwest … that’s a potential impact on power outages, we know we’ve got a lot of industrial sites in that part of the region, large roofs, those sort of impacts, the airport is out there of course. And a lot of homes,” Ward said.
The wind has already stacked up waves to a height of 6 to 8 metres in the Hauraki Gulf. At 2am, the high tide will coincide with a low-pressure system.
“That lifts the tide by about 300 millimetres,” Ward said. “And with a storm surge, that means we are experiencing spring tide kind of levels.”
It could mean waves wash over seawalls at Kohimarama, Okahu Bay, or further south, in Clevedon.
Outside, the rain is strafing across Wellesley Street but it feels like the storm is yet to directly hit. A person strolls past the office in a singlet, shorts and jandals.
One of the control room’s concerns now is complacency. Having watched the cyclone creep across the Pacific for days, some felt like talk of a “storm of the century” had been a false prophecy.
“There’s been a bit of a lull,” said Kelleher. “It’s almost like a false sense of security.”
She stressed that the wind had already led to slips, treefall, and windows blown in. A boatie was still missing off Great Barrier. Stronger winds were yet to come.
At 5pm, Ward was near the end of a 12-hour shift. He will stay the night at a nearby hotel so he can get straight back into it at 8am.
