Invercargill Mayor and Councillors Updated On Emergency Response Roles

Emergency Management Southland was invited to speak with Invercargill City councillors at its first meeting for the year on Tuesday 31st January.

Group manager and controller Simon Mapp gave councillors a rundown on what their roles would be in the community if a state of emergency was declared in the South.

Mayor Nobby Clark said given what was happening in Auckland with the flooding, he felt it was important for the organisation to give a presentation on how things operate in the South.

Councillors have also been invited to the regional co-ordination centre to see how it functions and how the team goes about its work when an emergency takes place.

Based at Environment Southland, the organisation has combined resources from local and regional councils, and provides trained staff that are on call 24/7.

Emergency Management Southland also looks after the Alpine Fault (M8) programme.

The ICC currently has 17 staff already completed civil defence emergency training and a further 30 staff are lining up to participate in courses this year.

Simon said there were also 26 community hubs around Southland that provide a framework to ensure people get the right care in the right time in an emergency.

The role of councillors was to reassure the community in times of crisis, and become the eyes and ears – to be able to relay back to the authorities in charge.

“Perception can be distorted very quickly,” Simon said.

But he emphasised that the most important job of all was to firstly look after themselves and their own families, before trying to help others.

Simon has worked in emergency management in both the West Coast and Nelson, and the Mayor asked him that, given what has happened in Auckland, was there anything they could learn from that?

“There has never been the perfect response in the entirety of emergency management.  Every response to an emergency is different due to the fact every emergency is different,” he said.

Obviously with an event like in Auckland having nine times more rain than average, it was hard to mitigate that, he said.

One staff member from Southland has been sent to Auckland to help with the emergency response which is still currently underway, and more will follow in coming days.