Dalight Savings ends this weekend

It's that time of year again.


This Sunday we all put our clocks back one hour. Remember "Spring forward, Fall back".


The Fire Service would like to remind you to change your smoke alarm batteries, or get a couple of smoke alarms if you haven't got any - contact the Fire Service if cost is going to be a problem.


And while you are thinking about keeping your family safe, it's a good time to check your emergency supplies.

Check that you can find all of your survival items, and make sure that they work. You don't need to keep them all in a special kit, I've got mine all over the house!

Check that your household plan is up to date, and everyone knows what to do. Has anyone on your emergency contacts list changed phone numbers, or moved house?

Check that your long-life food hasn't gone past its expiry date. Have a look for swelling, dents or rust on tins, as they are signs that the contents may not be good anymore. I write the date I bought canned food on the top, so I know to use the oldest tins first.

Have a look at your emergency water supply. If it's gone a bit green or has floaties, give the bottle a good clean out, and refill or replace it, and store a few more for good measure. You can never have too much. Don't forget you can pick up 10L water containers from the council office, for just $5 each.

Everywhere you go, always take the weather with you

Now I've got the Crowded House song stuck in my head...

I'm betting there are a few people in Nelson wondering who brought the weather with them on holiday, and hoping they could take it away again.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/6141806/Tales-of-destruction-as-flooding-sweeps-Nelson

A State of Emergency has been declared to help manage the response to the flooding and slips.

It makes you think, doesn't it? Could that happen where you're going on holiday this Christmas?

Is your favourite camping spot on a river flat which could flood? Are you tramping through an area where you'd have to cross streams or rivers?

What about other hazards? Is the bach in a tsunami evacuation zone, or in an area with a high fire danger?

I know it's a bit doom & gloom for what is supposed to be happy time of year, but unfortunately there are plenty of things that could go wrong while you are on holiday. Fortunately you can reduce your risks with some careful planning, and some of the same basic things that you do to prepare at home.

Know your risks - ask the local district council of the place you are going to.
Have a plan & learn where the important facilities are - medical centres etc
Take extra water and survival items with you. Something to keep the kids entertained in the car definitely counts as a survival item. Bored kids is a disaster on its own!

One year on

One year ago today I had toothache that kept me awake most of the night. One year ago today I sat in the silent, shaking dark with growning panic. One year ago today my cat was hiding under my bed, petrified. One year ago today I actually used my Civil Defence training. With the usual strangeness of time it seems both long ago and far too recent.

- Jennifer Jacobs, Christchurch

4th September 2010 - 4: 35am

For people in Canterbury the earth shifted beneath them, literally, and everything changed.

For some people it was a dry run of what was to come in February, but for others that first shake was enough to tear their lives apart. It was a miracle that no one died in that quake (the timing meant that most people were at home in their beds), but people no longer felt safe in their own homes (some were forced to abandon their houses due to the physical damage), familiar places were broken and no longer familiar, workplaces closed, sometimes forever, livelihoods lost or drastically altered.

What was "normal" became something very different to what you or I would consider to be normal. Moata's blog on Stuff has some brilliant insights on this, and the comments are enlightening, and quite touching. http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/blogs/moatas-blog-idle/5554131/Happy-anniversary-baby

Things changed for the rest of the country too. There was a certain degree of "What the..? Christchurch?! But Wellington is supposed to get the Big One..." and then the sudden realisation for many people that, yes, it could happen any where, any time. And we live in Porirua, the Wellington Fault is just over there, why aren't you prepared already?!

Sales of bottled water and water containers around the country sky-rocketed. I know some of our local stores sold out as people actually started to think about their emergency supplies, and stocked up.

The phone on my desk started ringing near-constantly with community-conscious groups asking us to come out and talk to them about preparedness, or individuals asking about the best ways to store water or create an emergency toilet. It's one of the things we're here to do, so keep those calls coming.

Some of our council staff were deployed to Canterbury to help with building inspections and repairs to the sewage, drainage & water networks. We also had staff helping at the National Crisis Management Centre coordinating the national response.

Response agencies around the country stretched their own local resources to send staff & volunteers to ease the burden of those local people who had continued to provide response services to the public, despite being just as affected as those they were helping.

Lessons were learned about things that worked in theory, but weren't so good in practice, proven systems proved themselves yet again. Some of the wrinkles were ironed out of plans which had never been fully tested, and almost everyone had some handy gem of wisdom to pass on to help others get through the next event - which unfortunately came all too soon on February 22nd.

What have you learned from Canterbury's misfortune? Is there some handy tip that friends or family in Canterbury have passed on to you? Have you taken extra steps to prepare your family as as result of the Canterbury earthquakes?

75% prepared

Awesome work, guys!

According to the latest Annual Residents' Survey of 400 Porirua residents, 75% of you have stored food & water and have a household plan for an emergency. The last time the survey was done, we only recorded 56%. What changed your mind?

While I'd love to claim the credit, I know a significant proportion of it to be a direct result of the Canterbury earthquakes. It's sad, but true, that it takes a disaster to spur us into action. I wish it didn't.

There's hardly anyone that I know that doesn't have friends or family in Canterbury, and when it's friends and family telling you the things they've experienced, and what they've had to do to get through, it really makes you realise that it could happen to you too. Especially since the Wellington region was always the place waiting for the Big One - the Canterbury quakes came out of the blue.

Have you changed your attitude towards preparing for emergencies as a result of the Canterbury quakes, or is there something else which made you decide to get ready?

Are you one of those 75% who are prepared? If not, why not?

While we don't want to be having more disasters, if there are other things that have got you thinking and preparing, please let us know!

Unlucky Lego Man

Some absolutely fabulous emergency preparedness videos by Chloe & Sophie Crowe from Ngaio School in Wellington.









Fantastic work, guys! I think we could all learn a thing or two from Unlucky Lego Man.

Enjoy Queen's Birthday Weekend

If you are heading out of town for the long weekend, remember to take extra care on the roads. Don't forget, if you get caught driving 5km over the speed limit, you will get a ticket!

The weather looks like it's going to be pretty variable around the country - hopefully it's nice where you're going, but keep an eye on the forecast.

And finally, take survival items for the kids and you on the journey... food, games, drink, blankets (especially for the Desert Road), music and lots of patience.

It’s easy to make a household emergency plan

Latest media release from the Wellington Region...

Recent tragic events in Christchurch should reinforce to all of us the benefits in having a household emergency plan, Wellington Region Civil Defence Emergency Management Chairperson Jenny Rowan said today.

“An effective household emergency plan only takes a few minutes to prepare and can take a lot of stress out of the period that follows a natural disaster or major household emergency,” Jenny Rowan said.

“It’s important that families or flatmates prepare these plans together so that everybody knows what to do and where things like survival items are located.

“The Wellington Region CDEM Group has prepared an award winning 12 step guide booklet called It’s Easy. Copies of these are available for free at all city, district and regional council offices throughout the region and can be downloaded online at www.getprepared.co.nz

“Households should also regularly add emergency items to weekly shopping lists and make sure they have enough water stored to last three days. That helps spread the cost of these across the year and also ensures that items with an expiry date are regularly replaced.

“Being well prepared for an emergency is easy. All that’s needed is a commitment to making a plan,” Jenny Rowan said.

Award-winning guide to preparing for an emergency

I have to say that our public education group in the Wellington Region is awesome!

Here's a media release about some of our work.

Emergency preparedness document wins international award

A guide outlining easy step-by-step instructions for how to prepare for an emergency, published by the Wellington Region Emergency Management Group, has won the International Association of Emergency Managers 2010 Global Public Awareness Award.

The “It’s Easy” booklet was published in June 2010. The initial print run of 37,000 copies has been nearly exhausted.

“We’ve received positive feedback from householders and our local Emergency Management offices about the ‘It’s Easy’ booklet. But we’re really rapt and proud to get international recognition from an organisation with the standing that the International Association of Emergency Managers has,” Wellington Region Emergency Management Group Controller Rian van Schalkwyk says.

“Production of the booklet was a real team effort from the greater Wellington region Civil Defence Emergency Management public education group.

“This group identified a need for a handy, easy to read and understand guide for emergency preparedness and then produced it. They’ve done a tremendous job.

“Natural disasters can strike without warning anywhere at any time. The need for emergency preparation has been spectacularly highlighted recently by the Canterbury earthquake and also by floods in various parts of the country. It’s clear that the more preparation people make for an emergency, the more likely they are to get through it and that’s where the ‘It’s Easy’ booklet can help,” Rian Van Schalkwyk says.

Copies of the award-winning “It’s Easy” booklet are available from Council offices throughout the greater Wellington region and online at http://www.getprepared.co.nz/.

Power cut in Porirua

From Stuff: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/3900044/Power-cut-to-4500-Wellington-homes

Power was cut to around 4500 homes in the Mana area, north of Wellington last
night. Power went out about 8.30pm in Paremata, Titahi Bay and Mana,
Plimmerton. The fault was traced to a substation in Mana, a Wellington
Electricity spokesman said. Power was restored to all homes by 9.10pm, after
the electricity supply was re-routed by technicians. The cause of the power cut
was still being investigated tonight. A 9:05pm train between Paraparaumu and
Wellington was replaced by buses due to the power cut.

Hopefully everyone had had their dinner by then? If not, I hope you were prepared and had another method of cooking available to you, like a gas cooker. It's not just the big disasters where you need to make use of your survival items.

Lessons from Chile

The latest issue of "Impact" has been published by the Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management, and it has some good articles in it - especially one on the lessons which can be learned from the impact of the 8.8 quake that struck Chile on 27 Feb, and caused tsunami warnings all around the Pacific. Building codes, infrastructure redundancies & public education and preparedness really do make a difference.

There's also plug for the Wellington Region's new step-by-step preparedness guide - "It's Easy - Get prepared for an emergency", which you can download here (670kb). The others in the public education team and I are pretty chuffed with how it's turned out.

Discovering what it's like to be stuck at school

On Thursday last week, a class of 11 & 12-year-old kids from Discovery School in Whitby got a taste of what it would be like to be stuck at school after a major event like an earthquake.

In the week prior I got a few calls from the pupils asking if I could come in and talk to them about emergency stuff during their earthquake simulation day on Friday 11 December. They were going to spend the whole day and overnight at the school living like they would in an emergency. Awesome, I'm in!

However, their teacher, Mr McManaway, had been very sneaky, and gotten to me first. So, in collaboration with the parents, we sprung it all on them a day early! It would hardly be a realistic exercise if the kids have a sleeping bag, a tent, and dinner for four tucked away in their school bag, would it?

10am on the Thursday an earthquake struck while the kids were at phys-ed. The sound system played the realistic rumbles and crashes of an earthquake while the kids dropped, covered and held. Once the aftershocks stopped (the track got stuck on repeat...), we all made our way back to their classroom, and they discovered the wreckage.





Tables upended, bookshelves toppled, possessions strewn across the room, tree branches through the windows, "broken glass" everywhere. Total carnage! It took a good while to get it cleaned up and made liveable again. Because living there was what they were going to have to do - possibly until Saturday morning, which, as far as the kids knew, was when their parents were going to pick them up.



Once they had things tidy, we took stock of the situation. I gave them the run-down on what was expected of the school in such situations, and we all discussed where their parents worked, how long it was likely to take them to get to the school and so on. We had a look at the emergency supplies that were available, and thought about how to ration those. Some kids hadn't had any breakfast, and some had planned to buy lunch so didn't have any food with them at all. There were presentations on emergency food and water, and how to dispose of sewerage in an emergency.

A bit before lunchtime we headed over to the library to discover that the earthquake had affected it as well, and there were injured kids inside who needed their help. I was well impressed by their first aid skills.

I had to head off around lunch time for another meeting, and when I left the kids were still under the impression that they were going to have to use a bucket for a toilet.

I got back shortly after 5pm, and the kids were still being kids, and the teacher was looking slightly frazzled, but nobody had gone cannibal yet. The emergency survival food was dug out for dinner and consumed with varying degrees of enthusiasm. We then sat down to watch the show that screened after Aftershock - the one about the family surviving for three days on their emergency stuff. We thought the kids were probably a bit young to inflict the full movie on them.

The next plan was to sort out all the sleeping arrangements. The kids spent a goodly while building forts and tents out of the available furniture before we decided that, since we had a perfectly intact roof, the curtains would be more use as blankets rather than tents. Some interesting "debates" about group versus individual needs.

The kids had pretty well bedded down for the night by the time I headed off arounf 9:15pm. Their parents were scheduled to pick them up at 10:30, so they could go home to their real beds, and be vaguely functional human beings for school the next day.

A really interesting day!

Disaster Awareness Week 2009

Just in case you weren't aware enough - it's Disaster Awareness Week!

Disaster Awareness Week runs nationally to coincide with the International Disaster Reduction Day on the second Wednesday of October - this Wednesday, 14 October.

You may have heard the ads on the radio already - Wherever you are right now, are you ready?
There are also ads showing on TV.

After the past few weeks' events, I reckon the residents of Porirua are much more aware than they used to be, but to help push the message home, we're working with Porirua New World (who you'll be very pleased to know contacted us during the tsunami alert on the 30th of September to see if they needed to put their Civil Defence plan into action) with a display table of important information, and survival items around the store will be highlighted. We'll also be giving away eco-shopping bags - they have a checklist on them of some of the things you should have for your survival kit - a good reminder when you're out doing the shopping.

If you are after containers to store emergency water in, you can stop by at our main council reception desk in Cobham Court. The big yellow containers are $15 each and hold 15 litres of water - they're a bit easier to stack than old fizzy & juice bottles - takes up less room in the cupboard.