The comprehensive report on tsunami hazard, risk, and preparedness – released by Civil Defence Minister Rick Barker yesterday – also recommends some controls on land use in potentially affected coastal areas of Northland.
The region is singled out as being at greatest risk of a tsunami, along with the Coromandel area and the east coasts of both the North and South Island.
It warns the Whangarei District could face dozens of fatalities and a bill of hundreds of millions of dollars should a 4.5-metre tsunami strike, but says this is likely to happen only once every 500 years.
However, Clive Manley, Group Controller of the Northland Civil Defence Emergency Management (CDEM) Group, says the risk attached to Northland is not unexpected given the region’s location and the fact it boasts approximately 3200km of coastline – one of the largest of any region.
The Northland CDEM Group comprises six members; an elected representative from each of Northland’s three District Councils as well as the Regional Council. A senior Northland representative from both the police and fire service round out the membership.
Mr Manley says the new report recommends some controls on coastal land use in the North as well as a variety of other warning and public education measures.
“Pleasingly, it also acknowledges Northland has been proactively working to consider and address the risk from tsunami – even before the Boxing Day tsunami that stunned the world last year.”
Mr Manley says several weeks before the Boxing Day disaster, the Northland CDEM Group had already released its own almost 200-page plan that identified tsunami as one of a host of potential threats to the region and backgrounded some of the historical tsunami events that had affected the North.
He says the new Government report only really addresses the risks to urban Whangarei and other larger centres around New Zealand in any detail.
Consequently, officials in Northland are also working with the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research on a separate, more-comprehensive project to assess the risks to the wider region in detail. That long-term project is currently still in the planning stages.
He says a number of the recommendations made in the new Government report will be incorporated into the Northland project including:
· development of early warning systems for coastal communities
· possible changes to the way coastal land is planned for and managed
· a public education campaign
· other related, emergency management planning
Meanwhile, Mr Manley says as recently as last month emergency services and Civil Defence officials in Northland conducted an exercise in Whangarei based on a fictional tsunami warning from the Pacific Warning Centre.
He says the risks to Northland from a tsunami are probably fairly remote compared to other events like flooding, cyclones and infrastructural failures, however, the consequences of one should it occur mean that risk can not be dismissed lightly.
“Prior to Boxing Day last year, the fact we had even considered tsunami risks in our planning was probably seen in some quarters as improbable. Unfortunately, history proved that nature can deliver the unexpected.”
With that in mind, Northlanders are also expected to take part in a global tsunami warning exercise in mid-2006.