State of Emergency has been declared for Te Tai Tokerau
A state of emergency has been declared for Northland as at 1pm Tuesday 31 January, for an initial period of seven days, as part of the response to the current weather event.
The emergency declaration was requested by Northland Civil Defence Emergency Management (CDEM) Group Controller Graeme MacDonald and signed by CDEM Group chair Kelly Stratford. An Emergency Mobile Alert advising of the declaration is being sent to phones in Northland which are capable of receiving the alerts.
There are a few misconceptions about an emergency declaration, partly because they are relatively rare – in Northland, there have been only five emergency declarations since 1973, some of which affected only parts of the region.
An emergency declaration isn’t when we take an event seriously, or when we expect you to start taking it seriously – that’s been happening since the Heavy Rain Warnings were issued. And it also isn’t intended to cause additional concern in our communities.
Declaring an emergency is a step under our legislation which allows the Civil Defence Controller and/or those to whom they delegate authority, access to emergency powers, granting authority to protect life and property in extraordinary emergency events under the Civil Defence Emergency Management (CDEM) Act 2002.
Some of the most commonly-used emergency powers include evacuating premises and places, entering premises, closing roads and public places, removing aircraft, vessels, vehicles etc and requisitioning property, equipment, material or supplies. Of these, enabling evacuations is often the key reason for an emergency declaration.
We don’t know for certain that we will need to make use of these emergency powers but given the potential for the main impact of this event to happen overnight, we’ve done it now as a precautionary step so we have them available if they’re needed.
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