Disaster is a good teacher

The past year has been rather bizarre. Due to the demands of building and managing the Disastersearch website and its team of volunteers, and working to help those people affected by the disasters of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, my life became one of balancing my role with Disastersearch and my role as a city councillor. In many ways, the two roles are not that far apart.

My readers here in Palmerston North may be shaking their heads at that statement. However, consider this - Disastersearch is a humanitarian agency involved in public service. A city councillor’s role is that of public service. In council, I work within a politicial arena, for much of my work with Disastersearch, I am too. In both roles, I have to deal with bureaucracy and red tape.

Life is not made up of discrete events. Everything we experience becomes part of us and makes up the greater whole. My work on Disastersearch does not stand alone from my work as a councillor, the two are complementary and just as my being a city councilwoman has helped with things I have needed to do for Disastersearch, so have the lessons of Katrina helped me as a councillor.

The structure of government in the United States is very different to here. Local government has powers and costs that, thankfully, we don’t. In New Zealand, the Police force is funded by central government, so in simplistic terms, is like a federal police force. We don’t have States and our provinces are geographical, not political entities. Local government has no control over the Police force based in their area, or of health services, Fire departments, or education. These things are all funded by and controlled by central government. We do, however, have two different types of local government: a regional authority, and local. (In a couple of areas, these roles are combined into one unitary authority). In Palmerston North, this means that Palmerston North City Council takes care of all local government for the city, but Horizons Regional Council oversees such things as environmental management and public transport.

During the floods of 2004, the two local government areas (Manawatu District Council and PNCC) had to work together, alongside Horizons Regional Council. Prior to my involvement with Disastersearch, economic reasons were behind my opinion that PNCC should become a unitary authority and take on the regional councils roles in respect to our area. I tend to agree with Wanganui Mayor, Michael Laws, that running regional and local councils results in duplication of resources and unjustified additional costs on ratepayers. After Katrina, I now have first-hand knowledge of how too many layers of government can seriously disadvantage the people it is trying to serve. The response both before and after hurricane Katrina has relied on city councils, plus State government, plus Federal government, and all agencies inbetween. You have all seen the news reports about the lack of co-ordination and its consequences.

When a disaster strikes Palmerston North, we will have the emergency services (Civil Defence, managed by city council) stepping into action. We will have city council co-ordinating activities with Civil Defence, with neighbouring councils, with the regional council, and with central government. We are lucky in that our council has very good working relationships with the Police and Fire departments, but at the end of the day, should PNCC need them to do something, we can only ask and not insist.

During the 2004 floods, I contacted the Manawatu Mayor and volunteered to man phones or do whatever he could find for me to do to help. When the call came to open our homes to evacuees, my home was put on the register. The actual emergency was handled very well, but the giving of aid was not. Plenty of people volunteered, but there was no management plan for this. People donated a lot of furniture, clothing, etc - much of which was unusable. (How many ball gowns do people really need when their homes have gone under water?) We had people here who decided to speak on behalf of Civil Defence when they had no authority to do so, we had scams where people presented themselves as charity collectors, but who were not. Our disaster was a tiny one compared to what happened after Katrina, and has resulted in improved planning, however, until that planning is put to the test, we won’t know how good it is.

Being faced with what occurred after hurricane Katrina resulted in a much greater awareness of our need for emergency planning. Our Civil Defence and council staff have been wonderful, have responded to all my questions and given me access to the “red book” for our emergency planning. The only aspect I am still concerned over is that there is no evacuation plan. This city has been cut off by floods several times in the past. The likelihood of us being hit by both floods and earthquake is slim, but Katrina has taught me that where human lives are at stake, we need to plan for all eventualities.

With Disastersearch, we have proven that people need online information in the event of a disaster. New Zealanders have a high uptake of new technologies and many of us regularly use the internet and have cellphones that give Net access. Yet, despite having the tools, how many of us use them for emergency planning? How many of us have prepared our emergency kits? How many know where the local evacuation center is? Do you know how to contact the city council without looking it up? Do you know that Horizons has a flood warning announcement system on their website? Did you even know Horizons has a website? If you have to escape the city, how will you alert friends and family overseas?

The tsunami-that-never-happened was a recent example of the power of modern communications. Gisborne had a spontaneous evacuation after people received calls from friends and family overseas. Overseas news reports erroneously said New Zealand would be hit by a tsunami and nobody waited for our government or Civil Defence to alert us. This event was a good wake-up call that we all need to seriously heed the messages for us to all be prepared. Hurricanes give warning, earthquakes don’t.

Palmerston North City Council has a responsibility to keep its citizens safe. Politicians cannot just ignore emergency planning and leave it to staff and Civil Defence. It is our responsibility as councillors to know what the plans are and what roles we have in the event of an emergency. In that, Katrina has taught me some valuable lessons.