PAT BOOTH MATTHEW GRAY
Question: What are the early lessons from Christchurch that we must now take into account urgently?
“Tell Auckland to plan for the worst.”
The advice came from Takeo Ohara who lived through the terrible 1995 Kobe quake and, as executive director of his city’s research institute for regional planning, oversaw the recovery.
There are differences in scale – Kobe lost 6279 dead (and recovered all but two of their bodies). Within 20 seconds, 34,000 were injured, nearly 200,000 homes were destroyed or damaged, a million families were without power, water, gas and sewerage. The city shook through 700 aftershocks in the first 24 hours.
Kobe moved 20 million tons of rubble and spent $10 billion rebuilding its container port, reconnecting 300,000 telephones, repairing and replacing its two wrecked expressways and the rail that carried the famous Shinkansen bullet trains. It also put up nearly 50,000 temporary housing units.
I was in the region during the quake and flew back 12 months later to see the recovery and to question Takeo Ohara on the lessons for Auckland.
If the demolition of Christchurch doesn’t match those terrible figures, the advice he gave Auckland and which I repeated in this and other Suburban Newspapers publications 15 years ago still stands.
Question: What are the early lessons from Christchurch that we must now take into account urgently?
A study of likely disaster outcomes in Auckland started in 1996. It was scheduled to take four years to finish.
Questions: What was the outcome and what has been done since? Will the Christchurch experience lead to change?
Now Auckland supercity boundaries take in former local bodies that previously had their own emergency plans.
Question: The new headquarters for disasters is in Pitt St. Experienced emergency workers have criticised the shutdown of local area headquarters in Manukau, the North Shore and Waitakere. Have those worries been allayed?
Kobe’s motorway system collapsed. One log jam on the city’s roads a few days after the quake trapped thousands in cars which could not move for more than 12 hours.
Questions: What plans are there to provide long-term bypasses while Auckland motorways are repaired?
How safe are Auckland’s bridges? What about the essential service pipes hitched to their spans?
Some of Kobe’s hospitals went into emergency mode but played no part in the first stages of disaster because they were cut off behind a highly damaged roading system. What has been done to counter that happening here?
Christchurch could lose a thousand CBD buildings. Wellington has that many needing urgent earthquake strengthening. How many in Auckland are listed as potentially dangerous ?
The building code – as I understand it from a Wellington survey in the Dominion-Post:
There was no code until 1935 but buildings given the equivalent of the Christchurch green sticker as safe and usable then would not qualify as safe now.
Later buildings which rated 100 percent compliant under 1965 rules would now rate a marginal 34 percent.
The types assessed have apparently also changed. Before a new code in 2004, only buildings built from unreinforced masonry were assessed – now all buildings can be scrutinised.
The Wellington survey says that since the 2004 Building Act changed the criteria, it’s up to councils to identify earthquake risk and issue notices to owners to strengthen or demolish.
Question: How many buildings in the supercity have got an implied but not stated red sticker hanging over them and what’s been done about them?
Canterbury earthquake scientists didn’t know their two dangerous fault lines existed.
So what do we know about what lies under Auckland?
SURVIVAL RELIES ON THE OUTLYING UNITS
A quake ravaged Auckland would be hugely dependent on air support if its roads and bridges were out of action.
Around 20 air ambulance helicopters shipped patients out of Christchurch after the February 22 disaster and others were used to get supplies to isolated suburbs.
Top Civil Defence boss Clive Manley says Auckland has at least that number of choppers at its disposal courtesy of the RNZAF and various other emergency services.
“We would commandeer everything available by way of helicopters and planes,” Mr Manley says. “Makeshift areas for landing would be established in the unlikely event of all runways being out of commission and we have already identified those in rural areas.”
He says district health boards, St John Ambulance and various other emergency services have also mapped out alternate routes to and from the region’s hospitals to counter damage to major arterial routes.
“We are as prepared as it is possible to be,” he says. “The region has well developed inter-agency plans for responding to emergencies. These are exercised regularly.”
Mr Manley, a former chief executive of the Far North District Council and group controller of its Civil Defence Emergency Management Group, says Auckland’s blue print for disaster response has already been tested in part by a series of events including the storms that caused havoc earlier this year, the swine flu pandemic and the threat of tsunami.
Staff and volunteers deployed to Canterbury in late February and after an earlier earthquake in September 2010 have also learned lessons that will be worked into existing contingency plans.
In summary, he says: “We work together planning for and responding to events and are well prepared.”
But at least one critic has grave reservations. The former veteran emergency services worker has been a volunteer in the Auckland network for 14 years.
He says the organisation has put its eggs together in one dangerous basket by centralising its operation in a regional headquarters at Pitt St.
Destruction of that, he says, could sabotage the best laid plans by knocking out a primary communication post in the midst of a major emergency. The new headquarters was put together after the formation of the new Supercity Council in 2010 when all seven Civil Defence organisations across the region became one.
Old bases in areas like the former Waitakere, North Shore and Manukau cities still exist though the bulk of staff would be deployed as part of the centralisation plan.
The source, whose CV includes 34 years of emergency work in Christchurch and Auckland, fears the day the new system is put to the test.
“You need to have outlying units in times of disaster,” he says. “You can’t run everything from one site. There has to be a community response with people immediately on the ground in affected areas. Our survival depends on it. Air support just won’t cut it and precious time will be wasted trying to organise it. Everyone knows that it is vital to get people medical attention in that first golden hour – it’s all down hill after that.”
Similar concerns are raised by long time investigative journalist Pat Booth who still has vivid memories of the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan and the aftermath that he reported on after visiting the city a year later to witness its recovery efforts.
The Leigh resident says Aucklanders can’t afford to be complacent or think themselves outside of nature’s reach in terms of shifting tectonic plates.
Authorities say the risk of a major earthquake is low but history shows the region is not immune.
A cluster of three quakes measuring 3.7, 4.5 and 3.8 on the Richter scale occurred 30km east off the coast of Orewa in February 2007. The tremors rocked residents living right across Auckland between 8.24pm and 11.23pm on a Wednesday evening.
Damage was minimal but the jolts sent a wave of panic through people as far away as Titirangi.
Auckland’s forefathers also cowered at nature’s unpredictable might in 1891 when a quake rattled the main central business district for a drawn out 30-second stretch.
The tremors were felt as far away as Cambridge in the south and up in the Northern Wairoa.
Various suburbs surrounding the main city centre were also affected – most notably Otahuhu where the public school was evacuated.
“We can’t hide behind history,” Mr Booth says. “Christchurch did that to an understandable degree – not any more. Nor should we.”
Mr Manley moves quickly to allay concerns and says Civil Defence has worked with its partners to explore every possible scenario likely to be faced by Aucklanders.
He says the organisation has the same staff numbers as it did before the birth of the supercity and is operating off an identical budget.
Two vacancies incurred through retirement are now in the process of being filled.
“We have 37 paid staff dedicated to Civil Defence and can draw on about 300 trained people from within the Auckland Council,” he says. “We also have extensive volunteer networks in areas like the North Shore, west and Manukau.”
Two existing buildings at Elcoat Ave in Henderson and East Coast Rd, Mairangi Bay are fully equipped to function as alternative headquarters if the Pitt St base is ever rendered useless, he says.
The organisation has updated its telecommunications equipment, satellite phones and VHF radio gear and could also operate out of a makeshift site.
“We could start from scratch if we had to using the mobile sort of equipment that our staff are equipped with. I believe a base could be set up in a warehouse or something similar in about one hour. All of our facilities are transferrable.”
Mr Manley says no natural disaster is likely to knock out all of the city’s bridges and roads.
State Highway 18 would still offer a vehicular connection to the North Shore if the main Auckland and Upper Harbour bridges were disabled and access by sea is also part of the strategy.
“It might take a little longer but there would still be access,” he says. “It’s just not conceivable that absolutely everything would be knocked out in a city so big.”
Liquefaction is another story.
Auckland’s landscape differs from the terrain in Christchurch which is dominated by a large river basin that contributes to the environment currently causing big problems.
But a good portion of waterfront developments in the central business district is built on reclaimed land and a number of older buildings could be susceptible.
Examples include the old ferry building and the former post office now redeveloped as the Britomart transport centre.
The integrity of larger modern structures is less likely to be compromised.
“They don’t just sit there on shallow foundations like some of the houses that have been affected by liquefaction in Christchurch,” Mr Manley says. “The excavations for these big buildings were huge and they have been piled into solid rock.”
But anything built before a rewrite of building code requirements during the mid 1970s is susceptible.
A report in the NZ Herald on March 5 suggests up to 412 commercial buildings could collapse in a moderate quake and says details are being kept secret while city heads move to update records.
Mr Manley admits some structures may need work.
“Auckland does not have any building currently listed as being dangerous,” he says. “We potentially have some that will require strengthening.”
Work has already been carried out on many of them.
“There is some possibility of them being at risk in a big one. But the chances of that happening are remote.”
The same logic applies to sewerage, water and power.
Mr Manley says a loss of all three across the entire region is highly unlikely and utility companies have contingency plans in place to cover a range of scenarios depending on where the problems occur.
He says they have also been strengthening infrastructure over a number of years in anticipation of disaster.
“”I don’t want to appear too optimistic and stress that people still need to be able to look after themselves and their neighbours if they are cut off.
“We recommend that everybody in Auckland has a survival kit with items listed at www.getthru.govt.nz,” he says.
Mr Manley says an Earthquake Prone Building register is now being put together.
SOME ANSWERS
Disaster HQ: Outlying units in times of disaster needed.
Buildings in Henderson and Mairangi Bay fully equipped to function.
Civil Defence: 300 trained people from within the Auckland Council.
Motorway and bridges: SH18 would offer a vehicular connection to the North Shore if Auckland and Upper Harbour bridges were disabled and access by sea is part of the strategy.
– Papakura Courier
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