Latest news with #AucklandEmergencyManagement
1News
12-05-2025
- Climate
- 1News
Auckland prepares for climate change realities
Auckland's emergency response teams are preparing for the realities of climate change, considering potentially life saving options such as leaving air conditioned libraries open for longer during heatwaves. But when it comes to stopping climate change from getting worse, figures show our biggest city is way off target. Aidan Milner, a hazard and warning adviser at Auckland Emergency Management, says heat has not always been top of mind for civil defence organisations, but that has changed. He is part of a national heat reference group including scientists, the Ministry of Health and emergency managers. "Heat is a novel hazard for the emergency management sector because we've traditionally focused on the likes of geohazards and utility failure but we've really started to realise that maybe heat is going to be a bigger problem than we anticipated here in New Zealand." One study Auckland Council commissioned showed built-up areas with little greenery could be three degrees Celsius hotter than surrounding areas. When hard surfaces like roads and footpaths released heat overnight, there could be little reprieve for central city residents during a heatwave, Milner said. He said the council might extend the opening hours of air conditioned facilities such as libraries and outdoor parks during extra-hot periods to allow people to cool down. The council is also looking at preventative measures such as encouraging more green roofs, trees and shade around the city. But our biggest city also has a role in cutting the greenhouse gases causing worsening heat in the first place, researchers say. The region is home to 33% of the population, and makes about 30% of household emissions. More than 40% is transport, mainly road traffic. Greenhouse gas researcher Jocelyn Turnbull of GNS has a senior role helping write a special report for the global Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on cities' role in the climate crisis. She said cities had not been the subject of a special focus by the IPCC up until now, but they posed unique challenges. "More than half the world's populations live in cities and most of our emissions come from cities, and then these built environments in cities come with issues that are really different to when you're thinking globally or regionally. "You've got all this concrete in buildings, and you can image that when heavy rain hits [it behaves differently]." Turnbull said Auckland's car-heavy emissions profile was typical for a city, and was solvable. "We have a really good opportunity to mitigate those emissions because we know how, if we don't drive as much or we drive vehicles that don't produce as much CO2." So far, the only major dip she had seen in the city's traffic emissions was during lockdowns, along with smaller local improvements from projects such as getting kids walking, scooting and cycling to school. Auckland Council has bold goals to slash emissions by quadrupling trips by public transport by 2030 and making it easier to bike places. But University of Auckland senior planning lecture Dr Tim Welch said public transport trips were still below pre-lockdown levels in 2019, while cycling trips have only just recovered to their 2019 levels - at about 370,000 journeys a month in March. Add plunging electric vehicle sales, and the goals looked out of reach. "We're wildly off track and I could say, without being pessimistic, just being a realist here, that unless we do something dramatic very very soon that's transformational we are going to miss these targets by a significant amount." Among other things, Dr Welch blamed high train and bus fares, and a lack of central government funding for two big things that were proven to work: more fully separated bus lanes, and extending separated cycle lanes to get the average, cautious bike rider completely out of car traffic. "It's easy to get people who are brave and really into cycling on a bike if we paint some lines on the road, but if we want to get everyone out there who's able and willing to cycle we have to make it feel safe, and we have to offer more connections so people can get from their house [to the network]. "If we don't provide the infrastructure, people can't use it." He said Auckland's City Rail Link will help by making trains faster, but the big untapped public transport opportunity was buses. "The train carries less than two million people a year. "The biggest lift for public transport is the bus. "The problem for buses is that for most people to get where they want to go, the bus has to sit in traffic." Auckland Transport did not want to be interviewed but said it had halved its direct emissions by electrifying trains and some buses - though that did not make a dent in the vast majority of trips being made by fossil-fuelled cars.
NZ Herald
30-04-2025
- Climate
- NZ Herald
Russell Brown: The flaws in Auckland's weather warnings
Russell Brown: "For all the soul-searching after the events of 2023, it seems official agencies still haven't worked out how to tell us important things urgently." I was preparing for bed before midnight on Good Friday when I heard the first peal of thunder, somewhere in the distance. Then another. I walked into the office and loaded the rain radar on the MetService website. It was clear things were about to kick off. A line of rain storms, north to south, was descending the map and beginning to slam into Auckland. I knew that set-up: it was how the radar looked during the extraordinary rain event of Auckland Anniversary weekend 2023, when it felt like reality itself had torn. I knocked on the door of our younger son, an autistic night owl who appreciates a heads-up about sudden loud sounds, then lay in bed listening to the rain sheeting down, punctuated by cracks and bangs of thunder overhead. By morning, the Mt Albert New World, which closed for 20 months after the 2023 storm, had flooded again, and the footbridge over Oakley Creek, which had just been replaced after washing out in 2023, was washed away again. Several shelters and civil defence centres had opened while I slept. Many people who talked to reporters had the same question: 'Why weren't we warned?' In truth, we were. As ex-Tropical Cyclone Tam loomed before the holiday weekend, we received all the usual advice about tying things down and cleaning out guttering. We were even told there could be a thunderstorm or two on Friday evening. Thunderstorms, by their nature, are hard to precisely predict; the most you can generally do is say that the conditions exist. MetService issued a warning about Friday's thunderstorms just after midnight, and it was reposted on Facebook by Auckland councillor Richard Hills, who had already lost electricity on the North Shore. Auckland Emergency Management, whose teams had stood down as Tam's winds eased on Friday, shared it around 2.30am, half an hour before the warning was due to expire. Most of us were asleep in our beds at the time. Should the authorities have used their ability to turn our phones into emergency sirens? The residents of East Auckland, who had a mere 5mm sprinkle that night, may not have been impressed. But MetService, perhaps stung by the criticism, asked Auckland Emergency Management to do just that the following day. I was in the fruit shop at 2.04pm, when everyone's phone went off with a message that blared 'URGENT ACTION REQUIRED' and warned of severe thunderstorms 'until 2.15pm?' It was nearly two hours since I'd looked at the rain radar and posted to my friends on Bluesky that 'it's about to kick off again in Auckland. Out west, anyway.' A second siren 20 minutes later extended the warning to 3pm, without the stray question mark. The weather event itself had not reached central Auckland and was leaving the region. The alerts, however, were still with us. A third phone klaxon sounded at 6.39pm on Sunday, warning urgently of the potential for 'torrential rain' in the north, west and centre of the city. But according to MetService's own radar, a long line of intense rain storms had already been ploughing down through the west and over the Manukau Harbour for an hour and a half. The front of it was nearly over Raglan. I messaged a friend there to tell him he had incoming weather. For all the soul-searching after the events of 2023, it seems official agencies still haven't worked out how to tell us important things urgently. Perhaps the system should focus more on risk – tenants and owners of flood-prone properties might be keener than the rest of us to sign up to be woken. But it's hard not to feel there is something more broken in the system. And unless it's fixed, the risk is that we'll stop listening.
NZ Herald
26-04-2025
- Climate
- NZ Herald
Severe thunderstorm watch for top of North Island, heavy rain brings new flood threat
🟡🌧️The Heavy Rain Watch for Northland has been updated, valid to 1 pm Sunday. 🟡 ⛈️A Severe Thunderstorm Watch has been issued for Northland from Dargaville to Whangarei north, valid from 1pm tonight to 1pm Sunday. … — MetService (@MetService) April 25, 2025 MetService meteorologist Sarah Haddon said warm, moist air is being pulled across the country over the next few days by a low-pressure system in the north Tasman Sea. 'The most action is expected over the upper North Island, with a heavy rain watch as well as severe thunderstorm watch currently in place for Northland until 1pm Sunday. 'There is also a moderate risk of thunderstorms, with a low risk of downpours, for Auckland all day tomorrow, and this risk continues more broadly for the upper North Island into Monday.' Kia ora Aucklanders, @MetService have released their thunderstorm risk chart for Sunday 27 April. Please be sure to keep up with the latest weather information. — Auckland Emergency Management (AEM) (@AucklandCDEM) April 26, 2025 The latest MetService thunderstorm risk suggests a moderate threat of thunderstorms in the far north of Northland, north of Kaitāia to Bay of Islands, as well as heavy rain with intensities of 10-25mm per hour. There is a moderate risk of thunderstorms spreading south over Northland, reaching Dargaville to Whangārei around midnight. There is also a low risk of thunderstorms over Auckland and the northern Coromandel Peninsula. Niwa also said 'uncertainty remains in the forecast' and there is the potential that the Far North District could receive moderate to heavy rainfall on Saturday and Sunday. 'A plume of moisture north of NZ will be the culprit. If it stays farther north, rainfall amounts will be lower,' Niwa said. The top of the North Island was battered as Cyclone Tam slowly rolled over the country last week. More than 20 Far North homes are still without power a week after the ex-tropical cyclone first struck the region.
RNZ News
21-04-2025
- Climate
- RNZ News
Auckland Emergency Management defends storm alert timing after Easter flooding
Traffic queued as cars drive through the remaining floodwater on St Lukes Road on Saturday morning. Photo: RNZ / Calvin Samuel Auckland Emergency Management (AEM) general manager Adam Maggs is defending the agency's response to the wild weather that lashed the city over the long weekend. An Auckland City councillor and a raft of voices on social media responded with frustration after official warnings of the intense and severe storm arrived after the worst part of the storm did. Some Aucklanders said the severe weather alerts, sent several minutes of each other on Saturday, were too little too late, with flooding reported on Easter Friday night. Photo: RNZ / Nik Dirga AEM opened a civil defence centre and provided emergency accommodation for ten displaced families over the weekend in response. "On Friday night we had a watch in place which is a lower level alert to let us know, our population should be prepared by the risk is lower," Maggs said. "But on Saturday we had a different situation, we had saturated soil, we had residents who had been displaced, we had vulnerable communities in Mount Roskill and Sandringham and the emergency mobile alert is one of the tools we can use to communicate to the public, its very effective when you need a lot of reach. "We looked at the thresholds and said look is this severe, likely to cause damage to property of life risk? And we said yes it could. "We also looked at saturation, time of day, it was in the afternoon lots of Aucklanders were travelling, there were lots of people on the road so we made that call." The Auckland Emergency Management general manager said it's important people rely on agencies who send out mobile alerts. "If people get a mobile alert that is a call to take action," he said. "I appreciate they're intrusive they alert people and I've spoken with many that find it frustrating, I absolutely understand that however our role is to alert our public when there is a likely or urgent risk and we'll do that in the best way we can." "The mobile alert is that mechanism when we get these sort of situations," he said. Adam Maggs said Vector is leading the response to restore power to pockets of Auckland but AEM has offered some assistance over the long weekend but didn't know how many properties were still without power. He said volunteer response teams had been out in some of the areas that may still be affected by outages, knocking on doors and doing welfare checks. "The work they've done will assist Vector in prioritising their work plans for today," said Maggs. Auckland Council's building inspection teams have already carried out 16 inspections on properties that reported flooding. A further 50-plus properties that reported lesser impacts will be inspected this week but so far, none of those properties would meet the threshold of a yellow or red placard under emergency declaration conditions according to AEM. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
