Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon
Fire and Emergency have revealed they've made changes to better prepare for major weather events at today's inquest into 2023's deadly storms.
The hearings started in June and are currently in their Auckland phase, examining the public warnings issued during Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland Anniversary floods.
Fire and Emergency National and International Response Manager, Ian Duncan, said they've since added resourcing to their specialist water response teams.
"We reviewed the original roll out of the specialist water response teams which was supposed to only be one per region," he said.
"But it was determined that we actually needed more because of the heightened awareness of the risk due to severe weather, due to the difficulty in sometimes getting vehicles to move urban search and rescue personnel and resources around.
"We were able to get a business case signed off for us to increase our fleet allocation."
He said access to vehicles was particularly important in a natural disaster like Cyclone Gabrielle.
"So four wheel drives are useful, towing capability is useful, trailers are useful.
"Those are the kind of things that we need to be able to get our hands on very quickly. What we've found in the past is where we might say we'll rent, we don't need to buy these vehicles and hold them on a daily basis.
"It might be better if we rented them when there's a weather event or a large earthquake. Vehicles are in short supply and everybody's trying to get their hands on them and it's not, sometimes it's not so easy.
"So we realised actually we should have some of our own capability to be able to move quickly and rapidly in whatever the tasking might be."
Duncan said changes were also made to equipment and training.
He said that included things like wet weather suits and having a system to clean them for others to use on the run.
"We have increased the knowledge, skills and awareness and training for certain districts to be able to have not 100 percent urban search and rescue but an increased training and skills for the people on those stations in certain areas, like Nelson, Gisborne, Whangarei.
"Firefighting clothing is not suitable to go in the water. It's the wrong type of PPE. Boots will fill with water and weigh you down so you need to have the correct, the correct equipment for the correct task.
"We've been reviewing the command system to make that more streamlined and integrated into the training for all levels of, from firefighter all the way up through to executive officer and then that last element is around about being able to track our personnel on the fire ground."
The two storms in 2023 caused 19 weather-related fatalities nationwide, including members of the fire service.
Duncan said once Cyclone Gabrielle had hit, a challenging situation had presented itself to FENZ on 14 February 2023.
"Cyclone Gabrielle had wrecked havoc overnight and the picture that morning was bleak.
"We had reports of two critically injured Fire and Emergency personnel and wide ranging damage and destruction across North Island communities this included damage to roads, rail, airports and power grids."
Duncan said six staff from Christchurch were brought to Auckland and initially deployed to Northland.
However, the storm did not hit the region had heavily as anticipated he said, and they were forced to re-deploy the Christchurch personnel to the Hawke's Bay region.
Duncan said even by 15 February, FENZ were not clear on the scale of damage the East Coast had suffered as a result of Cyclone Gabrielle and wasn't able to recall exactly the moment he learned that a State of Emergency had been declared there.
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