NZ News
Watch live: Update on storm and flooding from Auckland Emergency Management
] People are being warned to “get ready” as weather forecast to hit the north of Aotearoa progresses as expected on Tuessday afternoon.
Auckland Emergency Management has given an update on the situation in the region, which has suffered days of extreme heavy rain and flooding.
Four people have been killed in the floods to date, after record amounts of rain fell at the weekend.
MetService is forecasting more heavy rain, particularly in the city’s north, later on Tuesday afternoon and evening.
MetService meteorologist Georgina Griffiths said the warnings were on track.
“For Auckland and Northland, we are not seeing non-stop rain. As expected it is lines of heavy rain coming in bands.”
“For Auckland north of Orewa, the red warning does not start until 5pm tonight … we do expect impacts in the overnight period – slips, flooding.
“For the rest of Auckland … and including Great Barrier Island, we are on a orange warning. The rainfall totals forecast are not overly large, but this warning is in place for localised, heavy falls overnight, kicking in from 8pm in the north and later further south through until about 10am Wednesday.
“If you live in Auckland south of Orewa, we expect the impacts to be quite isolated – pockets of impact … The key thing for people south of Orewa is that not everyone will see impacts. If you live in an area that is in a red warning you should expect to see some impacts overnight.”
Those in the Coromandel and the Bay of Plenty west of Kawerau including the Rotorua lakes district, Western Bay of Plenty and Tauranga city, should “go and have a look at what the weather warnings look like. They kick in a bit later on but get ready”.
Back in Auckland, those on the eastern coastline north of the Waitematā Harbour should expect a wind watch to kick in overnight.
While wind gusts were not expected to be too strong, MetService was “expecting some tree throw over roads or powerlines in the tonight – overnight period because we are just so saturated”.
Auckland Emergency Management’s Rachel Kelleher, National Civil Defence’s Roger Ball, Superintendent Shanan Gray, MetService’s Georgina Griffiths and Auckland Transport’s Sarah Bryant at a media briefing on 31 January. Photo: RNZ / Lucy Xia
National Civil Defence director of emergency management Roger Ball said in Northland the regional emergency co-ordination centre had been activated and NEMA had deployed three staff to help there.
In Waikato, the regional emergency co-ordination centre and local emergency operations centres had been activated. In the Bay of Plenty, CDEM was monitoring the situation closely, Ball said.
The Beehive bunker also remained active, Ball said.
He asked people to follow the advice of local emergency management groups.
“Please stay alert, reach out to whānau and friends. It’s about your personal preparedness but it’s also about our community resilience together.”
An emergency management mobile alert for the Auckland region – for areas under the red and orange warnings – was issued after the conference.
Burglaries
Superintendent Shanan Gray said it was important to acknowledge those who died in the floodwaters and their whānau, as well as staff involved in those incidents and the wider response to the weather event.
He urged people to be safe, travel only if necessary and ensure journeys were planned before leaving.
“If you do come across heavy flooded areas as part of your travel, we suggest you don’t try and forge through due to unknown dangers within that water.”
Police have been deploying reassurance patrols in communities heavily impacted by the weather.
“Police acknowledge we have had some burglaries in both residential and commercial premises.
“It’s really disappointing to see the opportunist and I suppose selfish type of offending that brings people to these type of offences, particularly in vulnerable locations.”
One person was arrested and another was warned at a commercial place in Wairau Valley, where a vehicle with stolen goods was found.
On Tuesday morning, police arrested four people after a burglary at Pt Chevalier – three were referred to Youth Aid and an 18-year-old was facing charges.
Transport impact
Auckland Transport spokesperson Sarah Bryant said Aucklanders should go home early to avoid the afternoon heavy rain.
“Across the region there is potential for slips and floodwaters to disrupt travel and make some roads impassable.”
There was lower than usual traffic volumes on Tuesday morning after warnings for people to avoid travel ahead of the heavy rain forecast.
“That helps ease the pressure on the transport network and that will help later today.”
Since Friday, 82 roads had to be shut – 35 were still closed, 47 have been re-opened. Thirty-two traffic lights went down on Friday and 30 have been restored – the remaining two were still being powered by a generator.
For information on road closures, check AT’s website.
The rail network was running well, but significant speed restrictions were in place, with up to 20 slips reported on the network.
Adverse weather on Tuesday afternoon may impact ferry schedules.
Guidance and advice
Evacuations centres will be set up for people needing to seek shelter overnight, at the Wellsford District Community Centre, Warkworth Town Hall. People should bring essential items with them – like medication or any special food requirements.
Pets can be taken to Civil Defence centres if owners are evacuating and have nowhere else to stay – but for example, dogs should be on a leash, and ideally muzzled.
Cats should be in a carry case to keep them safe or away from other animals.
Skip bins to pick up waste from the weather are also being organised alongside community groups. Use gloves to handle any items affected by the floods, as it may be contaminated from sewage overflows.
Auckland Emergency Management controller Rachel Kelleher asked people to secure any property or items outside with strong wind forecast.
Watercare has increased sampling in the network and found no safety issues with drinking water. Tankers are still being provided in West Auckland, with intermittente outages in the area while repairs are underway.
For financial assistance, contact the Ministry of Social Development on 0800 400 100 for Civil Defence payments – they can help with accommodation costs due to evacuation, loss of income due to flooding, emergency food, clothing or bedding.
SOURCE RNZ
Latest News
Opportunities to mitigate multi-million-dollar RNZ budget blowout likely missed – experts
Multiple opportunities to identify and mitigate a multi-million-dollar budget blowout at RNZ appear have been missed, according to the former executive director at Audit New Zealand.
The public broadcaster on Monday revealed a near $12 million shock financial loss after a litany of financial blunders, which will now lead to sweeping job cuts.
The $11.8m loss is more than 25 times the $470,000 RNZ had expected to lose over the year to June.
CEO Paul Thompson took responsibility for the result, and said internal reports gave an inaccurate picture of the finances, meaning the scale of the loss only became clear in October.
RNZ’s former chief financial officer Hilary Parker resigned unexpectedly in early October.
The board said it would commission an independent review into what went wrong.
Independent contractor Stephen Walker, who left the Audit Office earlier this year, said the size of the loss was surprising, as was the length of time it took to identify it – months after the financial year ended.
Supplied / OAG
“Probably more of a concern is that they had seemingly been unaware that they were running up a significant deficit until they were in the preparation stage of their annual report in October.”
Walker said public entities typically produced monthly financial reports.
An interim audit also took place before the end of the financial year, he said, but if the organisation hadn’t identified significant losses at that stage, the auditor could also be in the dark.
“It seems that there’s a real weakness in forecasting and budgeting that’s occurred here and that the monthly accounts, when they’re produced, either haven’t identified these significant variances against budget or the magnitude of them really hasn’t come to light until right towards the end of the financial year,” Walker said.
“And really at that point, there’s no opportunity for the chief executive, the leadership team to take, and the board to take, any corrective action because the year has effectively been completed.”
Walker said the “significant miss” was difficult to account for given it was more than 10 percent of RNZ’s total funding.
He said based on RNZ’s annual report, financial complexity didn’t appear to be a factor.
“This $11.8m loss isn’t made up of one particular item … it seems to have been contributed to by a number of separate expense lines running over budget. So I don’t think it’s necessarily to do with complexity.”
Among the errors, RNZ wrongly counted $2m from land sales as income in its budget. Staff costs also came in $3.2m over budget, including $1.4m in redundancy payments.
Professor at Auckland University’s business school Norman Wong said based on media reports the issues identified were “significant and troubling”.
Supplied / University of Auckland
“But recognising the sale of land as income in their budget is a basic error that one would have expected to have been caught and corrected well before it got to this point.”
With funding reductions at RNZ over the past two years, Walker expected greater scrutiny of financial results.
“Virtually every public entity has had their annual budget reduced. And so you would expect … the leadership team on a monthly basis and board – I’m not sure how frequently the board will consider the information – but you would expect them to be interrogating the results on a regular basis throughout the year,” he said.
Walker said initiating an independent review was the correct course of action and that he’d want to understand what information the leadership team and the board were regularly receiving.
He said he’d “love to say” surprising financial results were rare, but conceded they occured on a semi-frequent basis during his time leading the Audit Office.
“The benefit of independent scrutiny by the Audit Office – and the auditors providing that support to the Auditor General – [is] that the reporting is fairly presented at the end of the year, whether it’s good, bad or ugly.”
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