Speaker 1: Kyota.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Terror It's been
Speaker 2: more than two years since Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland
Speaker 2: Anniversary weekend floods.
Speaker 1: The storm en route to hit the North Island could
Speaker 1: be one of the biggest in twenty years. Be prepared
Speaker 1: to leave if you need to and have enough supplies
Speaker 1: to sustain yourself for up to three days.
Speaker 3: Well definitely in this time we have warning. There was
Speaker 3: no warning last time.
Speaker 1: Auckland and Thams Coramandel have extended the estates of emergency
Speaker 1: for another week.
Speaker 4: One shopper described the supermarket as crazy busy, with queues
Speaker 4: going right through the store.
Speaker 1: States of emergency have been now been declared for Northland
Speaker 1: to Auckland, Corimandel, tait Affati and Awporter.
Speaker 3: Key the messages please take care and follow the advice
Speaker 3: of emergency services.
Speaker 1: Nineteen people died. A three week long inquest has begun
Speaker 1: in Hastings District Court examining how prepared we were for
Speaker 1: the cyclone, how warnings were issued and the emergency response.
Speaker 1: Today on the Front Page, Open Justice reporter Rick Stevens
Speaker 1: joins us from court to take us through what we
Speaker 1: know so far and what we hope to learn.
Speaker 2: From these tragic events.
Speaker 1: So Rick, the first phase of the inquest was held
Speaker 1: in Auckland. Tell me about that.
Speaker 5: So the first phase in Auckland was held in August
Speaker 5: and it looked at the deaths of four people in
Speaker 5: the Auckland floods and then two others, two firefighters at
Speaker 5: Murrowai during Psycha, and Gabrielle that hearing look to the
Speaker 5: emergency responses and what led to a state of emergency
Speaker 5: being declared in Auckland along with the circumstances of the
Speaker 5: death of the people there. The Rawle inquiry has now
Speaker 5: moved to Hastings where it's looking at the fate of
Speaker 5: people who died as a result of cycling. Gabrielle on
Speaker 5: the East coast.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit more about the victims and
Speaker 1: what we know about them.
Speaker 5: So in hawks Bay there were initially seven men who died,
Speaker 5: four women and a little girl. She was sadly Ivy Collins,
Speaker 5: whose family home in Esdale was flooded. The oldest was
Speaker 5: Helen Street eighty six, who died in Napier. She was
Speaker 5: dependent on supplied oxygen and the coroner will be looking
Speaker 5: into kind of what happened there. Well. One significant development
Speaker 5: is that we've had an extra name added to the list,
Speaker 5: and that is that of Joseph Ahuiari, mister who really
Speaker 5: went missing in his car on the night of the
Speaker 5: cyclone and it's been a big kind of local mystery
Speaker 5: about what happened to him. There have been a number
Speaker 5: of searches for him since, both on land and at sea,
Speaker 5: and what happened to him has been perplexing. The police
Speaker 5: said they initially didn't think that his apparent death was
Speaker 5: linked to the cyclone, but now that they haven't furred
Speaker 5: it to the coroner and she has decided to include
Speaker 5: it in this inquiry.
Speaker 1: So that takes the number of deaths that the coroner
Speaker 1: is looking at in total to nineteen.
Speaker 5: That's correct, Yes, so those that are covering both Auckland,
Speaker 5: Hawks Bay and some others.
Speaker 1: I understand that three apparent self inflicted deaths post cyclone
Speaker 1: will also be included in the inquiry. What's the reasoning
Speaker 1: behind that?
Speaker 5: So there were three deaths occurred in the months after
Speaker 5: the cyclone that these have been included as being apparently
Speaker 5: self inflicted. I can't really tell you too much about
Speaker 5: that at the moment. There's still non publication orders around
Speaker 5: those people, and we'll get to learn more about them
Speaker 5: in time.
Speaker 4: I'm sure when cyclone Gabrielle came through, people were cut
Speaker 4: off for a long periods of time. The networks are
Speaker 4: quite resilient, but they're not resilient enough, and Gabrielle exposed that.
Speaker 4: Up until Gabrielle, we thought that if you had a
Speaker 4: handful of cables going into an area like I think
Speaker 4: it's Hawk's Bay that was both worst affected towns like
Speaker 4: Wairoa in Hawks Bay, they had a handful of lines
Speaker 4: going into those places, but the lines went across bridges
Speaker 4: and the bridges were wiped out, and a couple of lines,
Speaker 4: and it turns out that having two or three lines
Speaker 4: in isn't enough. You need more. So we're building resilience
Speaker 4: into the network and we've been doing a lot of
Speaker 4: work on that since Gabrielle and Gabriell's It was quite
Speaker 4: a wake up call for that.
Speaker 1: What is the judge looking at when it comes to
Speaker 1: cyclone Gabrielle in particular, I mean, what are some of
Speaker 1: the preliminary issues raised.
Speaker 5: So the current is looking at the circumstances of individual
Speaker 5: desk but also things like the flooding list of places
Speaker 5: like Salapu and take Karaka, and how agencies could have
Speaker 5: responded to the event, what could have been done better,
Speaker 5: whether in fact, you know, planning should allow for houses
Speaker 5: to be built in flood per areas that sort of issue.
Speaker 1: And are the issues facing each of those areas quite
Speaker 1: similar or are there specifics to each area that they'll
Speaker 1: be really honing in on.
Speaker 5: I think there will be specifics to each other, each area,
Speaker 5: although you know, although it was a district wide event,
Speaker 5: you know, there were things about each area that would
Speaker 5: be perhaps peculiar.
Speaker 1: The response of emergency services will of course be under
Speaker 1: the microscope over the next few weeks, given some people
Speaker 1: who actually called Triple one during the cyclone were told
Speaker 1: that there was no help available. What do we know
Speaker 1: about that thus far?
Speaker 5: We haven't heard too much about that at the moment.
Speaker 5: But yeah, so the coroner obviously will want to know
Speaker 5: what happened there. I mean, they were told it wasn't
Speaker 5: but I think just because the scale of what is happening,
Speaker 5: you know, the emergency services were stretched really really to
Speaker 5: the limit, So the corn will be looking at what
Speaker 5: warnings were issued by the authority beforehand, where the message
Speaker 5: is about what to do, were timely inaccurate, whether the
Speaker 5: emergency services were sufficiently prepared. There are also questions about
Speaker 5: rivers breaking their banks, the mitigations measures that might have
Speaker 5: been put in place, whether these were adequate, could the
Speaker 5: councils have done.
Speaker 1: Generally, What is the point of a coronial.
Speaker 5: Inquiry, Well, like any inquest, I think it seeks to
Speaker 5: establish a circumstances around a death, but also, you know,
Speaker 5: are there lessons that can be learned from that, what's happened,
Speaker 5: how can things be better handled, and you know what
Speaker 5: needs to be avoided in the future. In terms of
Speaker 5: this sort of event where it's a large scale event,
Speaker 5: very complicated, with a lot of agency is involved in
Speaker 5: the coordination between them, things happening in real time very quickly,
Speaker 5: you know what can be learned from that. I mean,
Speaker 5: there may be a whole heap of issues that come
Speaker 5: out of that that may help planning for future events.
Speaker 5: But that's kind of what the coroner is all about.
Speaker 1: And it's been a couple of years since the events.
Speaker 1: Have you been speaking to any locals. How are they
Speaker 1: feeling this coming up again? I suppose.
Speaker 5: I haven't had a lot of you know, I mean,
Speaker 5: I've mentioned to people that it's back on. They're interesting,
Speaker 5: interesting and of course, but I think they see as
Speaker 5: part of the process that has to be gone through.
Speaker 1: Who are we likely to hear from over the next
Speaker 1: few weeks, So.
Speaker 5: The next two weeks, well, this week anyway that the
Speaker 5: mister witnesses mainly sort of fire and emergencies, civil defense people,
Speaker 5: from the local councilors, the police. We'll probably hear more
Speaker 5: from the families next month. The circumstances around Joseph Whoy's
Speaker 5: disappearance will be considered next year.
Speaker 3: More Anna, It now seems for most of us that
Speaker 3: we are past the worst of the current weather event.
Speaker 3: The review that I announced and to what went wrong
Speaker 3: in the first twenty four to fort eight hours is underway.
Speaker 3: Bulkiners began the big Auckham clean up the very next
Speaker 3: morning after the flood. You've made me proud and humbled
Speaker 3: to be your mayor. You've risen to the challenge to
Speaker 3: look after your neighbors and your local communities, to leander
Speaker 3: helping hand and support our council staff on the ground,
Speaker 3: our emergency services and our volunteers have also been magnificent,
Speaker 3: in some cases putting themselves at risk. Today, our council
Speaker 3: focus moves from the emergency response to provide greater support
Speaker 3: to the big Auckhanm cleanup. The big organ cleanup is
Speaker 3: being led by communities, community organizations, local boards, local councils,
Speaker 3: the private sector and supported by Buckland Council and central government.
Speaker 3: So let's show in New Zealand and the world the
Speaker 3: strength of all the communities across our region.
Speaker 1: And when it comes to these kind of things, I mean,
Speaker 1: the witness lists can be enormous. What's it like sitting
Speaker 1: there and hearing the discussions because sometimes it can be
Speaker 1: quite monotonous. But it's all a part of the process,
Speaker 1: isn't it.
Speaker 5: I think yes, it isn't quite quite other process we've got.
Speaker 5: We've got fifteen councils in what is not it? So
Speaker 5: fifteen lawyers in a calling that's not not huge. So
Speaker 5: there's a lot to go through. There are different organizations
Speaker 5: and people who represented who will want, you know, to
Speaker 5: question witnesses and things like that. It's it is a
Speaker 5: long process. But then things that happen in the judicial
Speaker 5: system quite often are And.
Speaker 1: Tell me again, in terms of emergency services, who who
Speaker 1: will be representing each one of them? I suppose not
Speaker 1: the exact names, but I'm thinking foreign emergency will be there,
Speaker 1: no doubt.
Speaker 5: Yes. In fact, we've got, you know, a national commander
Speaker 5: from fire emergency here who happened to be the district
Speaker 5: commander at the time. And so you know, it can
Speaker 5: be people quite high level and.
Speaker 1: Has there been much interest in and around the courthouse.
Speaker 5: Not a great deal at the moment. It may be
Speaker 5: different when people know that it's on, but it's mainly
Speaker 5: sort of professional people who are who are there today
Speaker 5: and or people associated with the organizations that will be called,
Speaker 5: and mainly their lawyers. At the moment, as I say,
Speaker 5: that's probably around thirty odd people in the courtroom, half
Speaker 5: of them half of them are our lawyers.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Rick, You're welcome. That's it for
Speaker 1: this episode of The Front Page. You can read more
Speaker 1: about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzdherld dot
Speaker 1: co dot nz. The Front Page is produced by Jane
Speaker 1: Ye and Richard Martin, who is also our editor. I'm
Speaker 1: Chelsea Daniels, subscribe to the front page on iHeartRadio or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for
Speaker 1: another look behind the headline.
Speaker 5: It's