February 22 - One year on

I wasn't there, so I can't give a personal view of the actual Canterbury quake of February 22nd 2011. I have friends and family who lived through the quakes, and some came through it better than others, but the general concensus was that it sucked big time. I can't give justice to the enormity of it without having lived through it, so I'm not going to try. I'm sure there will be plenty of stories in the media about people's personal experiences.

For myself, this time last year I was attending an Emergency Management conference at the Amora Hotel in Wellington, along with many of the Emergency Management Officers from around the country. Many of the Canterbury Emergency Management staff were at the conference to present on their experiences of the September quake.

We had listened to a presentation from Dr Kelvin Berryman from GNS Science about the first quake. I vividly remember him saying that it was remarkable how well the majority of buildings in Christchurch had come through, but he wouldn't want to roll the dice again.

We'd just stepped out for lunch when phones started ringing just after 12:51, and then almost every phone in the room went off with a Geonet notification of a 6.3 quake right under Christchurch. There were hurried conversations and more phone calls, and people started leaving. The conference staff looked a bit sad as their entire conference walked out the door. Conferenz has very kindly rescheduled it for next week, now new and improved with even more lessons learned!

The Canterbury staff headed straight to the airport to get the first flight able to land at Christchurch Airport, and many of us headed straight to the National Crisis Management Centre under the Beehive - "The Bunker" was up and running, and fully staffed within about 30 minutes of the quake. I had worked there after the September quake, but had come in on about Day 3, this time I was there from the get go - at the turning on the computers and opening up a new incident file stage.

It was quite a different experience , but quickly settled into the routine of not having much idea what was going on in the world anywhere other than in Canterbury, and going left to the ladies room, when I should have gone right, or was it the other way round? The NCMC is arranged in a ring in the basement of the Beehive, so either way worked. Finding the exit after a night shift is the tricky part, despite it being well signposted.

There were some quite hard moments - many staff had friends or family in Canterbury, and it wasn't uncommon to find people taking a moment in a quiet space to deal with their emotions.

People in Canterbury all know where they were at 12:51 on Tuesday 22 February 2011 - my Facebook newsfeed is full of the oddest things my Christchurch friends remember about the morning before the quake, where they were at the time, and the things they did immediately after. For some (me too), the week after seems to be a bit of a blur, but the day itself was crystal clear.

Do you remember where you were that day, when you found out what had happened? You might have been at home, at work, out and about, at school. If you think back, if it had happened here, at that time, how would you have coped? Did you have a plan for how to get your family in contact and reunited? Did you have enough water and food and other survival items stored at home to help you through at least a few days?

And how about now, one year later? Now that you've had a chance to see just what a disaster of that scale can do to a city, what it does to people, and how people coped and helped each other, have you taken some steps to improve how prepared your family is?

We're interested in finding the most prepared family, business and school in Porirua, so tell us your story!

2nd Australasian Natural Hazards Management Conference 2008

July 29 and 30 was spent at the 2nd Australasian Natural Hazards Management Conference. You'd think that with "Australasian" in the title it would be held somewhere warmer, where people wear thongs, not jandals, and sound like the cast of Neighbours. But not this time. This year's conference was held in Wellington, so instead of catching a flight to sunny Australia, I caught the train into town and walked to Te Papa in the rain.

There were some quite interesting subjects presented by people from Australia, the US, and other parts of the world. There were a few which stood out for me.

Planning how to rebuild after a major distaster - building back better - not necessarily replacing things as they were - some things were essentially poorly placed to begin with - taking some social responsibility as to what replaces things. Hurricane Katrina examples of areas of significant cultural heritage being replaced with casinos on the beach front - not good. Hopefully we can do better.

Legal issues around natural hazard information - This one was quite relevant for us - especially with regard to the new tsunami information that is becoming available. Once we know that a property is in a potential hazard area we have a responsibility to let the owners know - even if that means that property values drop. The thing is, the hazard risk has pretty much always been there, we're just letting people know of the risks that they may face, so that they can be better prepared. We'd get into more trouble if we didn't tell you.

Community resilience through co-operation - Disasters often span district boundaries. We were given examples from Australia of how municipal authorities were finally joining together to deal with events in a cooperative way, sharing resources, rather than duplicating efforts. Fortunately, in New Zealand, we've been doing this for quite some time, and even have it built into our legislation. It's nice to be ahead of the curve for a change! Go us.

The Mayor of Gisborne gave us a run down on on the quake in December 2007.

There was also a presentation on the Northland floods of 2007, which could very well have been retitled the Northland floods of 2008, and run in real time. The weather was quite attrocious that day. The Metservice had their rain radars on display constantly in the display area, so we had a constant update on how the storm was progressing whenever we had a break. Some of the EMOs were having to rejig flights so they could get back to their districts to deal with it all.

A well-spent two days.