With deep condolences to the affected families and friends of those lost or injured, with respect, a tracing of safety fault. Haere, haere, haere, ngaa hoa mate o Aotearoa.
Whakaari/White Island – patient status – Ministry of Health – Manatū Hauora
Urgency of daily EQNZ risk – Whakaari / White Island, 9 December 2019 – a cautionary analysis:
If the significant eruptive event of 9 November 2019 (that kicked the 6-month developing volcanic process up another gear, leading to a deadly harmful “moderate” event of 9Dec2019) was noticed in itself, as a warning for everyone to keep clear for a month, what record is apparent of that? ..
Nine whole days later comes the formal, hyper-cautious response (conservative of what, foremost – business as usual, scientific reputation, political relationships and quiescent public mood …? ):
Whakaari/White Island: Background activity increases further
Volcanic Alert BulletinWI – 2019/09
Mon Nov 18 2019 12:00 PM; White Island Volcano Volcanic Alert Level is raised to 2
Aviation Colour Code is raised to Yellow
“Volcanic unrest continues at Whakaari/White Island and some monitored parameters show further increases in activity. Hazards on the island are now greater than during the past few weeks, and the Volcanic Alert Level is raised to Level 2… In the past few weeks, the level of volcanic tremor has also increased from weak to moderate strength… The number or locations of earthquakes beneath or near the island have not changed… the monitored parameters are just above the expected range for minor volcanic unrest and associated hazards. The patterns of signals are similar to those through the 2011—2016 period and suggest that Whakaari/White Island may be entering a period where eruptive activity is more likely than normal… Volcanic Alert Level 2 is mostly associated with unrest hazards on the volcano and could include eruptions of steam, gas, mud and rocks. These eruptions can occur with little or no warning.”
Whakaari/White Island: Moderate volcanic unrest continues
Volcanic Alert BulletinWI – 2019/10
Mon Nov 25 2019 2:00 PM; White Island Volcano
Volcanic Alert Level remains at 2
Aviation Colour Code remains at Yellow
“There has been no change in activity at the volcano after the deep magnitude 5.9 earthquake, that occurred beneath eastern Bay of Plenty on Sunday 24 November… volcanic tremor remains at moderate levels. There have been few earthquakes near the island… fountaining is regularly throwing mud a few metres into the air at the vent but at current levels does not pose a hazard to visitors… in the expected range for moderate volcanic unrest and associated hazards. The monitoring observations are similar to those seen in the more active 2011—2016 period and suggest that Whakaari/White Island may be entering a period where eruptive activity is more likely than normal… Level 2 is mostly associated with unrest hazards on the volcano and could include eruptions of steam, gas, mud and rocks. These eruptions can occur with little or no warning.”
Whakaari/White Island: Moderate volcanic unrest continues
Volcanic Alert BulletinWI – 2019/11
Tue Dec 3 2019 1:00 PM; White Island Volcano
Volcanic Alert Level remains at 2
Aviation Colour Code remains at Yellow
“Explosive gas and steam-driven mud jetting continues from the active vent area… style of activity has been present since late September, although it is occurring more frequently now. No volcanic ash is being produced. Volcanic gas emission and seismic activity continue to remain elevated… Volcanic tremor also remains at moderate levels in the last week… level of activity is variable and remains within the range expected for moderate volcanic unrest. While the activity is contained to the far side of the lake, the current level of activity does not pose a direct hazard to visitors… some similarities with those seen during the 2011-2016 period when Whakaari/White Island was more active and stronger volcanic activity occurred… may be entering a period where eruptive activity is more likely than normal… Volcanic Alert Level 2 is mostly associated with unrest hazards on the volcano and could include eruptions of steam, gas, mud and rocks. These eruptions can occur with little or no warning.”
The two highlighted phrases in the above paragraph stand in direct contradiction to each other. Interpretation of immediate risk was thus loosely allowed to fail.
Language gaps and repetition are features of these three most recent reports. Leading up to them, in summary, there were two earthquake swarms earlier in the year (kept in silo). Then three other indicators were also too casually discounted: the rising crater lake, temperature and gas levels – “the highest [gas] value recorded since 2013 and the 2nd highest since regular measurements began in 2003”. Read all Volcanic Alert Bulletins here: geonet.org.nz/volcano/vab/all.
It seems to me, the greatest problem exists where the category “moderate” volcanic activity is one relating to (commercial) aviation risk, where at (human) ground level it can be a deadly risk and truly immoderate.
The next greatest problem, I would say, was de-prioritising this hazard, under the present conditions, from a Monday inspection cycle to a Tuesday, without which the Monday tragedy may have been avoided. – Who made that GNS decision, when and why? At least please clarify the inspection and reporting schedule around this hazard.
Thirdly, ‘the international best practise’.., if that is what determines this, of treating each and every seismic event as a unique and unrelated item (‘in a silo’), may have limited perception of this emerging volcanic crisis. Can this quake isolation approach be explained or reviewed at all?
GNS-defined no-go hazard zone, ‘as it would have applied on 9Dec2019’, in hindsight Thursday:
GNS Whakaari / White Island hazard exclusion zone 2019-12-12
Generally, we need to support science and scientists better and much more – for at times they provide our only lifeline. Help them to improve their work for us all.
The main question I have for GNS, is, why no particular study or escalation of alert around the 28Oct2019 Whakaari earthquake swarm? which could have averted tragedy, echoed on 6Dec19:
Earthquakes near White Island over the past 2 months
“The eruption is not caused by magma, but by steam, and this is much harder to track in our current monitoring systems.”[1]
“GNS also makes three monthly visits to test water, gas and soil, as well as to make surveys of surface deformation.”[2]
“It’s tapu because of the fact that we have our distinguished dead there.”[3]
“Tāupo volcanic zone.. runs from Ruapehu to White Island.. measured as some of the most productive volcanism on earth”. [4]
Godspeed and safe travels to the NZDF and NZPolice recovery operation 13.12.19
“In 2012, a lava dome was spotted and the alert level raised from one to two.. lava dome growth can be accompanied by explosive eruptions and could impact people on the island” [5]
“Overnight web camera images recorded a glow from the vent area, confirming high heat flow” [6]
Yet lower earthquake frequency leads to a lowering to “35-50% chance (medium likelihood) of an eruption occurring that could impact outside of the marked vent area within the next 24 hours” [7]
Comparing this graphic to earliest released in the sequence, showing tail of 9Nov2019 event only:
10Nov-10Dec19 quake intensity Whakaari
If GNS estimates are correct, and this was just a typical ‘Whakaari cough’, then there will be no significant eruption soon following the current anomalous (markedly quiet) seismic situation:
The reason being, the risen magma has burnt off (evaporated) its water table cap and punched through the rock overlay already, allowing free lava expansion movement and degassing thanks to the phreatic explosion of 9Dec. See also Deep Earth Carbon Degassing Project re “order of magnitude uncertainty in current volcanic/tectonic carbon outgassing makes answering fundamental questions about the global carbon budget virtually impossible”.
If the Labour Party is not elected to govern New Zealand today, it is because people want something different. ‘National light’ does not suffice. Those supporting National, or not supporting Labour, pay attention to ‘alternative facts’ and political spin. Bending the truth is significant about power, and Labour knows it. They have rebutted it, in the tax debate of September 2017, shining the torch away from their own record. Labour claimed much success, in the local elections of 2016, as evidence of a strong party ready to rise. From this they have gone on to pose as water-quality champions, by eliminating competition in that field. So let’s take a look at what they now propose to build upon in this area, veracity-wise.
Generation Zero rorting of polls in support of Labour-backed candidates is seen more and more every election, as economic crisis deepens, exemplified by the voter-defrauding chart produced here:
From GenZero’s http://www.localelections.nz/christchurch/environment-canterbury/ of 2016. – How is B+A=A higher than A+A=A, except as intentional lying? – ECan-paid contractor Pham then promoted candidate Pauling and split the vote for fourth place in Christchurch, allowing another already on the ECan payroll – Lowndes, zone committee chair – to secure it and become councillor. Lowndes broke election law by using an ECan logo on his campaign website, unrestrained. These were the Labour-backed candidates, professionally squeezing out grass-roots representation, slipping eyes past Labour’s high-pollution record and thoroughly foul conflicts of interest.
This was payback for 2007, when Save Our Water helped expose a Labour ECan councillor being paid to facilitate meetings for Central Plains Water, who then lost his seat. Ngai Tahu Iwi – intending corporate irrigator – lost its Labour seat at the same time (until National put it back, in May 2010).
The same kind of dodgy rort by the same group was seen three years earlier, when they rated the Labour-based mayoral candidate, Lianne Dalziel, higher for carbon-friendly policies despite these being practically identical to at least one other candidate at the time. This was to completely ignore (and hide) Dalziel’s role in Helen Clark’s Labour government, that had heavily developed dairying, irrigation and greenhouse gas emissions in Canterbury during its decade in power. Generation Zero are thus exposed as intellectual and methodological frauds, ingratiating to relative power. Generation Zero are thus, in effect, corruptly right-wing too – just like the ‘me first’ Labour significant cult of the leader.
Generation Zero – Christchurch mayoral candidate evaluations – October 2013
Dig into the Generation Zero fraud and what you find is, it is about attempting bigger fraud – that (consumer) transport emissions are ‘more important’ than industrial (agriculture, in New Zealand) emissions, that urban issues outweigh rural, that Auckland perspective will dominate the south. Of course Labour would want its apologists to say this, that (Auckland) city transport issues outweigh rural production – it is about shifting blame (and complete in-electability on this issue) off of Labour!
Generation Zero are understood and defined as a “public transport lobby group” by national news media (One News e.g.) out of Auckland influence – subordinating southern regional politics (of agricultural emissions reduction) to their own concern (urban transport planning). In 2017, new Labour then falsely took ownership of the water quality movement, with questionable policy proposals (tax water takes to fund river clean-up work, rather than transform the entire industry).
The ‘Generation Zero’ claim to be concerned for emissions reduction, to halt climate change, is belied by their actions. Totally. When they have the chance to stand against the National government, by endorsing the battle Save Our Water has brought to them since 2007, they walk away; they side with National’s decision to cut environmental democracy, that Save Our Water had represented for voters to Environment Canterbury (ECan). Instead, as the 2016 candidate rating chart shows, the Zeros back an ECan-paid consultant (staff) to replace public representation as somehow more suitable democratic voice – http://www.workingwaterstrust.org/who-are-we-.html director Pham. Professional resource-grabs – never public wishes – are what the Zeros are about. Their intervention is to eliminate emission-reduction proposals that Save Our Water has worked a decade for, from all decision debate. Generation Zero thus, by inter-dependency with reactionary Labour candidates, take climate action backwards!
Generation Fraud is what this is all really about: removing options and debate about resource conservation for the future generations, boiling everything down into the corporate one-or-two party choice; selling out the options of their own generation, by covering up Labour’s misuse of power, in reality. That is a offensively corrupt.
Right-wing frauds. If you are going to vote support for any of these people in September 2017, do so with your eyes wide open! The public elects representation on its own terms, not those of master manipulators.
Confirmed as divisive nonsense, through cover-ups by Labour Party adjuncts to corruptly nose them ahead in New Zealand elections, is that different generations of humans have separate material interests. Nothing could be more false. By fostering dishonesty, after their own style and career interests, New Zealand Labour does youth a massive disservice and so urgently needs to be exposed – to reduce the harm done by Labour influence immediately. Recruiting to their model corrupts and derails youth, against their own best interest, feeding the mental health crises. Over-emphasis on identity politics (anything for an extra vote) does this – distortion.
From this exposure of Labour deceit, political education can then progress, freed of the obfuscating market sleights imposed over decades by generations of corrupted Labour bureaucrats – for the sake of power.
The central, repetitive pitch of Labour leader Jacinda Adern in the TV1 main party leaders’ debate of 31-08-17, was that her generation lacked access to housing – given its inflated price relative to wages. While thin on detail over how they’d actual change this, and hiding the fact that years of Labour administration had only increased the disparity (from which multiple-home-owning Labour politicians always profit), housing security is an issue for every generation now. Vague dog-whistling, to gather attention for shifting power, is not an actual solution.
The destructive influence of Labour on youth wellbeing at community level has been further documented here:
The very worst of it is – beyond Labour’s corruption of aspiring youth to its evil gangster methods – is Labour corruption of local government staff in cementing its influence. They even go so far as having these staff falsify public records – community board minutes – to boost the optics of Labour effectiveness to the maximum level possible.
A Corrupt City Council, being CCC, is the shocking result: that the public can no longer trust its paid ‘servants’, under Labour instruction.
Labour in governance will do nothing except what enhances their power and status – one toxic, self-congratulating, self-promoting machine.
‘Dirty politics’ are not something different because they are Labour’s. A lot of warping effort, to disguise their record, for claiming agency over water quality standards. Theirs has been as great a contribution to pollution when in power, so they habitually lie to obscure this.
Substance before style, wins the day.
24.09.17 – The touted youthquake did not eventuate because, with opaque Labour self-interest, youth are neither silly nor blind: they knew they were being manipulated and not so many complied.
Jesinda at work? – source: Darrien Fenton facebook
Democracy, warts and all. Backwards is worse. Explore ways to improve it. Have the vision – what is the route to survival for all? DJTrump/KJIll are rolling out the opposite direction … Frightening. So, what is the all-inclusive, sustainable development solution? Find it. Sell it. Win hearts to progress. (100% support would be the miracle)
Systemic failure in New Zealand emergency response is confirmed by repeat avoidable tragedies in Christchurch, unmitigated disasters under National-led government. Full responsibility lies with them and with everyone who has been selfishly and ignorantly voting support for corrupt sheer incompetence in central and local government: a regional despoliation shared between greedy empire-builders of Beehive and town hall.
With an eye – they happily admitted at the time – only for increased irrigation water for dairy profits from Canterbury, John Key, Gerry Brownlee and Bill English – backed by Christchurch and Canterbury mayors – have completely dropped the ball in every aspect of good governance in the region, since they destroyed its democratically elected council in April 2010.
Since then, because of this, many people have been unnecessarily dying due to the fragmentation of effective civil defence that the central and district governments have collectively caused. That is abysmal and completely unacceptable performance. Heads must roll. Starting today. For public safety.
The lazy, corrupt, ignorant incompetence that characterises New Zealand government has to stop: it is deadly at fault. The same confused fire-cordon-and-response failings that cost lives in the levelled Canterbury Television building on 22-23 February 2011 re-appeared on 14 February 2017 in the Port Hills fires.[1] The failing is in leadership and co-ordination, not that of hands-on responders: a communication and collaboration failure in the back office, from the top down. It is a man-made sabotage of effective regional response that John Key et. al. never imagined was going to be needed or could bite them so very, very hard. Now it very much has. The pattern of functional decay is thoroughly exposed.
News media could stop deflecting attention away from National’s gross mis-leadership and culpable manslaughters in Canterbury. Or remain accessories. Stop promoting self-advancing, opportunist and incompetent mayors.
Ask how the CTV building fire cordon was managed in February 2011. Was it effective in Police hands, as prescribed by an emergency site that had fatality? Or were fire crews excessively stretched without backup, then investigated as blameworthy? Were the fire responders made scapegoats, then and in February 2017?
Ask especially what action council took to check building safety and to cordon off hazards after 4 September 2010. None was apparent as a loud sigh of relief led into an ill-fated Boxing Day Sale, to satisfy city retailers, instead. Criminal negligence and liability rests here and instead we see knighthood reported? Not good enough by far.
Without remedial action at the governance level, New Zealand’s coming grand disaster – the Alpine Fault movement and its follow-ons – will only be all the more lethally tragic. Proposals to centralise emergency response are to save who time instead of getting on an aeroplane? And what happens then when Wellington gets badly hit? No confidence, at all, as it is unearned yet.
Tweet summary: #Canterbury regional bungle #ECan #CDEM
National Party implicated in #CTV + #Sugarloaf avoidable deaths With districts
Action summary: What public safety requires most, without delay, is –
all communities developing skills and means to organise, represent and keep themselves safe,
National out of central government,
Labour out of local government
– monopolies are never, ever healthy or helpful.
Monday 13 February 2017
c4:30pm Fire broke out in Lansdowne Valley, Selwyn District, spreading rapidly.
c7pm Fire broke out on Marley’s Hill to the north, in the Christchurch City Council area.
Marley’s Hill fire as seen from the south, above the spreading Lansdowne fire, c9pm 13 Feb 2017, in warm west wind
Two fires on Christchurch’s Port Hills stretch fire crews, destroys house, force evacuations
“Fire Service spokeswoman Lyn Crosson.. said an area of 400 by 400 square metres was burning at Summit Rd near Marley’s Hill. At 10pm, Crosson said the fire was still burning uncontained and residents on Summit and Worsleys roads were being evacuated. ‘Crews are currently working to prevent it jumping Summit Rd,’ she said. ‘Summit Rd will remain closed for the night.'” http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/89372687/large-christchurch-scrub-fire-out-of-control-second-fire-now-burning
Tuesday 14 February 2017
Not enough was done from dawn, by far, while confused officials argued jurisdiction.
Evacuation set #1 of 3 was ignored – emergency not declared, despite it already spanning two populated districts in very dry weather.
Marley’s Hill on 14 Feb 2017, view from the north, Lansdowne smoke to the south, warm west wind continues
SDC-1. Tai Tapu/Port Hills fires – update 10.30am “Two fires are continuing to burn this morning in the Tai Tapu/Port Hills area – one in the vicinity of Early Valley Road/Lansdowne, and the other in the Marley Hill area near the Summit Road. The fires cover an area of around 700 hectares. Fire status The Early Valley Road fire started yesterday evening at around 6pm. It has since crossed Summit Road around the Kennedy’s Bush area and at some other points. It is principally being fought by air with support from ground crews. Today crews will focus on protecting structures and controlling the fire, and protecting Kennedy’s Bush. The Marley Hill fire started in a car park around 7pm last night and spread west along the Summit Road area overnight. Protection of structures and the Christchurch Adventure Park and are also a focus for fire fighting. Both fires are now being managed by one Emergency Operations Centre based at Selwyn District Council’s Rolleston Headquarters as well as on site control points… Around 24 properties were evacuated last night with evacuations remaining in place currently. Tai Tapu School was opened last night to receive evacuees but closed last night with all evacuees staying with friends and family except for one family who accommodation was arranged for. No further evacuations are anticipated to be needed currently. One house has been confirmed destroyed by the fire, with a structure destroyed and one other house slightly damaged. All affected structures are in the Lansdowne area” http://www.selwyn.govt.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/216187/Port-Hills-fire-update-10.pdf
Below Marley Hill, by mid-afternoon 15.02.17, smokes billows phenomenally with new flames, wind had just turned dry-easterly
Two fires rage on the Port Hills as one enters the Christchurch Adventure Park “fire retardant had been air-dropped on the top station earlier in the day. Selwyn District Council principal rural fire officer Douglas Marshall said the fire was ‘crawling through the under-matter at the bottom of the trees’ at the top of the park, and that fire crews weren’t too concerned about it causing a problem at this stage. A nearby crew is monitoring the situation. Firefighters earlier said two huge blazes in Christchurch’s Port Hills were now contained, although the battle to put them out was continuing. … The Selwyn District Council said the Marley Hill fire appeared to be largely contained on the city side of Summit Rd by 3pm. … Operations have slowed down for the night. Marshall said there was one crew monitoring the Marley Hill fire and three watching the one at Early Valley overnight. He was expecting it to be a quiet night as there was not much wind. … Twenty-four homes had to be evacuated overnight, and a group of children were among those rescued on Monday after becoming stuck near one of the fires. Selwyn principal rural fire officer Douglas Marshall said 11 helicopters and nearly 120 firefighters were working to contain the fires on Tuesday, and could be needed for another two or three days. Three two-member firefighting crews from the New Zealand Army had also been dispatched to help. ‘The second fire … [at Marleys Hill] is working around the radio mast that’s up in that area. It’s currently working down a ridge it’s probably the top end of the [Christchurch] Adventure Park area,’ Marshall said. ‘It’s not contained. It’s still burning quite strong. … A Fire Service spokesman said the Summit Rd fire had spread across 1.5 kilometres. The flames were too aggressive to battle in the dark, so firefighters working overnight concentrated on trying to stop it spreading further” http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/89376043/Two-fires-rage-on-the-Port-Hills-as-one-enters-the-Christchurch-Adventure-Park
2.30pm Sugarloaf helicopter crash and pilot death. Flying halted temporarily, stakes raised greatly.
Helicopter pilot dies while fighting Christchurch wild fires “Douglas Marshall, principal rural fire authority officer at the Selwyn District Council, said the accident was a tragedy. ‘Firefighting is difficult and dangerous work … our thoughts are with the deceased [person’s] family at this time.’ He said it was possible a number of pilots involved in helping to douse flames would want to stand down following the accident, and authorities were respecting that decision. In a statement, Selwyn District Emergency Management said the Marley Hill fire remains contained, although ground crews are monitoring activity along the Summit Rd. The other fire at Early Valley is also contained, but there are some spots of fire burning downhill from the ridgeline above Governors Bay and Allandale. Helicopters will continue to operate until nightfall tonight and from first light tomorrow. The area of both fires combined as estimated at about 580ha.” http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11800525
SDC-2.Tai Tapu/Port Hills fires – update 3pm “The Marley Hill fire appears to be largely contained on the city side of the Summit Road. Parts of the Early Valley Road fire have crossed the Summit Road towards Governors Bay. Current activity across both fires is focused on efforts to protect structures and prevent the fire from spreading.” http://www.selwyn.govt.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/216188/Port-Hills-fire-update-3pm-14-Feb.pdf SDC-3.Tai Tapu/Port Hills fires – update 6.30pm “The current situation with the fires are that the Marley Hill Fire remains contained, although ground crews are monitoring activity along the Summit Road. Significant effort put into the Early Valley fire today has resulted in it being effectively contained, although there are some spots of fire burning downhill from the ridgeline above Governors Bay and Allandale. The New Zealand Fire Service is undertaking active structure protection in this area. Helicopters will continue to operate until nightfall tonight and from first light tomorrow. No further structures have been lost beyond those reported earlier.” http://www.selwyn.govt.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/216189/PORT-HILLS-FIRES-6pm-update-14-Feb.pdf
Wednesday 15 February 2017
Governors Bay evacuations overnight by Civil Defence; that fire contained, residents returned.
Evacuation #2 of 3 was ignored – emergency not declared.
Smoke then fire broke out in a big way in the Cashmere Valley and Port Hills south-west of Christchurch city.
Chaos had been unleashed which led to panic, mass evacuations, misinformation and terrible overnight fear.
Evacuation #3, widespread in panic and south-west Port Hills areas affected, was acted upon:
6pm A local emergency was declared jointly by the Selwyn and Christchurch mayors.
Port Hills Fires, Christchurch, Feb 15th 2017 – YouTube time-lapses, Dru Norriss
Port Hills fires: Live updates – extract
“1:00am Marley’s Hill fire escalates, as fire spreads downhill through the forest.. within 150m of Sign of the Kiwi
3:00am 700 Governors Bay and Allandale residents evacuated. Governors Bay School which is closed today
5:00am Fire seen close to the chair lift at the Christchurch Adventure Park
7:00am City council activates the Emergency Operations Centre to coordinate the welfare operation
8:00am Helicopters are filling up monsoon buckets in the Heathcote River, corner of Hoon Hay Valley Rd and Cashmere Rd
9:00am –We’ve broken its back’: Governors Bay chief fire officer Andrew Norris
9.09am Health warning over smoke
9.27am Helicopters are using water from ponds and dams on farms in the Lansdowne area to fill monsoon buckets to fight the Early Valley Rd fire. Two helicopters can be seen in the air above the fire and two others are refueling.
10.34am Conditions are fine and dry as firefighters continue to tackle fires on the Port Hills. MetService forecaster Cameron Coutts said winds were gentle, at about 17km/h, at the moment and had been blowing south west for some time. A north east change with 37km/h winds should hit the hills from about mid-afternoon, before dying down tonight
12:30pm Technicians are waiting to get access to transmitters that operate the city’s emergency services dispatch, including ambulance and police. Power was lost on Monday at the Marley Hill location and it is operating on batteries
1:56pm Power outages across the city
2:30pm: More fire service resources are being sent to the Christchurch Adventure Park, to assess if structures can be saved
3:00pm Victoria Park is being closed as thick smoke billows from the Christchurch Adventure Park
3:10pm Fire units are on their way to Worsleys Rd, Kennedy’s Bush, after reports houses are being threatened
3:15pm Fire crews are currently working to control a flare up in Worsleys Spur area in the vicinity of the Christchurch Adventure Park.
3:25pm Police are evacuating residents from homes on Worsleys Rd near Summit Rd. Three houses are under threat from the fire. A Cashmere resident described it as an ‘inferno’
3:31pm Helicopter resources are stretched and one is not available at the moment to drop water on the Christchurch Adventure Park
3:59pm Police have cordoned off Westmorland at Cashmere Rd and are urging people to prepare for an evacuation.
5:10pm Reports of residents being evacuated from the Cracroft area.
5:18pm Police have confirmed houses on Kennedys Bush Rd and its intersecting streets are being evacuated. Residents are heading to Pioneer Stadium
5:28pm Fire service has just issued a directive for all vehicles to get off Dyers Pass Rd
5:32pm Fire fighters say the blaze will ‘punch’ its way out of McVicars Plantation and hit the first corner of Dyers Pass Rd below the Sign of Kiwi before dark
6:00pm A command centre has been set up at the Sign of the Takahe
6:15pm The mayors of Christchurch and Selwyn have made a joint decision to declare states of emergency in the areas
6:22pm Fire fighters battling flames at the Christchurch Adventure Park only have about an hours worth of water left. Crews are scrambling to get more water to them
6:41pm There are unconfirmed reports that Pentre Tce, by the Sign of the Takahe, is being evacuated
6:50pm Cashmere Rd is now closed from Kaiwara St to Kennedys Bush Rd due to evacuations in Lower Cashmere, Cracroft, Westmorland and Kennedys Bush
9:39pm Fire fighters at the Sign of the Takahe cordon are telling residents above the landmark to leave their homes as the fire spreads, with reports it has moved into Victoria Park
9:44pm Canterbury Regional Controller Neville Reilly has been deployed to the Christchurch Civil Defence Emergency Operations Centre to head the overall response to the fires
9:55pm Authorities issue urgent evacuations: ‘Residents in the area from the Sign of the Takehe to Victoria Park should evacuate their homes immediately. Authorities are advising that the fire has crossed Dyers Pass Road into Victoria Park. Police and the Defence Force are evacuating properties in the area. We are also evacuating the south side of Cashmere Road to Kennedy’s Bush Road, and to Hoon Hay Valley Road'” http://www.star.kiwi/2017/02/live-update-day/
SDC-4.Tai Tapu/Port Hills fires – update 10am “Overnight increased fire activity was reported around midnight in the area above Governors Bay. Multiple fire units were called in from around the region to assist in firefighting and protecting properties. At approximately 3am fire and police evacuated around 107 residents from the Allandale area near Governors Bay, due to the fire risk. The Christchurch City Council has activated an Emergency Operations Centre to coordinate the welfare operation which includes a welfare centre at the Governors Bay school.” http://www.selwyn.govt.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/216190/Port-Hills-fires-update-10am-15-Feb.pdf SDC-5.States of Emergency-declared in Christchurch and Selwyn “The Mayors of Christchurch City and Selwyn District have made a joint decision to declare States of Emergency in their respective areas in relation to the Port Hills fires. The declaration follows the evacuation this afternoon of 200-300 residents as the fire shifted closer to residential properties. It is no longer just a significant rural fire on the boundary of the city. It is now a city issue with suburbs being evacuated. Christchurch Mayor Lianne Dalziel says a city response is also required to ensure the safety and welfare of residents… Selwyn District Mayor Sam Broughton says, ‘we acknowledge there has been a huge effort responding to the fire to date, however this declaration recognises the seriousness of the situation, and this will allow us to provide all the assistance necessary to respond to the unfolding situation. The district and the city must work together to manage the situation and address the different challenges the fire is creating in each area.'” http://www.selwyn.govt.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/216191/States-of-Emergency-declared-CHCH-Selwyn-15-Feb.pdf SDC-6.Port Hills/ Tai Tapu fire update: Residents should be prepared to evacuate – update 7.15pm “The Marley Hill fire has spread extensively down Worsley Spur, causing extensive vegetation burning in the Christchurch Adventure Park. The fire is approaching the residential area of Westmoreland.” http://www.selwyn.govt.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/216192/Port-Hills-fire-update-7.15pm-Wed-15-Feb.pdf
Homes destroyed, families evacuated as Christchurch fires spread “More than 1000 residents have fled their homes and at least eight properties have burned to the ground as a huge wild fire rages on in Christchurch. Terrified residents ran clutching precious belongings or bundled children into cars as the black smoke ballooned from the flames tearing through tinder dry scrub land. Several fires have now merged into one which is threatening dense residential housing. The blaze is estimated to have scorched more than 1850ha of land and is still growing. A state of emergency was declared in Christchurch and Selwyn, the Defence Force was deployed and health authorities issued warnings to vulnerable residents as black smoke drifted across the city. Civil Defence revised down the number of homes destroyed on Worsley Spur tonight to at least three after earlier issuing a statement saying 40 homes had been lost. A spokeswoman said the error was the result of misinformation being given to a rural fire officer and was revised following a ‘correction from the police on earlier information’. The incorrect figure was widely reported earlier tonight by media and made it into some copies of the morning Herald. Little information was available on how the error occurred but hard questions will no doubt be asked of authorities in the morning” http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11801058
State of Emergency declared “Christchurch Mayor Lianne Dalziel and Selwyn District Mayor Sam Broughton made a joint decision to declare the State of Emergency. It follows the evacuation of 200-300 residents as the fire shifted closer to residential properties in the south-west. Minister of Defence Gerry Brownlee has announced New Zealand Defence Force personnel have been asked to assist with fighting the fires. Ms Dalziel said a city response was also required to ensure the safety and welfare of residents. ‘Christchurch needs a multi-agency response given the seriousness of the situation. We need to be able to draw on all the resources possible to give our residents confidence in the ongoing response.’ Mr Broughton said: ‘We acknowledge there has been a huge effort responding to the fire to date, however this declaration recognises the seriousness of the situation, and this will allow us to provide all the assistance necessary to respond to the unfolding situation. The district and the city must work together to manage the situation and address the different challenges the fire is creating in each area.'” http://www.star.kiwi/2017/02/state-of-emergency-declared-city/
Editorial: Why did it take so long to declare state of emergency? “The terrifying change on Wednesday afternoon, which saw the situation deteriorate rapidly, shows there can be no room for complacency or confusion among those in charge of dealing with the emergency… Civil Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee expressed frustration that a state of emergency was not declared earlier by the Selwyn District Council, the lead agency in fighting the fires, or the Christchurch City Council, within the boundaries of which much of the burning land is situated. The emergency was eventually declared on Wednesday evening when flames threatened city suburbs, then destroyed more houses and forced mass evacuations. It was obvious to anyone that the situation was getting worse not better, when the amount of smoke rising from the hills expanded enormously. Questions will now need to be asked whether the Selwyn Rural Fire Authority acted decisively enough and quickly enough, deploying all available resources. For instance, it seems that tankers, equipment and personnel had been on standby at Burnham Military Camp, but could not move, by law, while the army waited for a request from the civil authorities that was slow in coming. Criticism of emergency services at the height of a crisis is easy to make and often ill-advised. However, it is clear that there are lessons to be learned from this emergency, and the various authorities will need to take an honest and hard look at themselves when it is over… people deserve the best possible leadership, and bosses who will take timely and decisive action to make their task easier.” http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/opinion/89454212/Editorial-Why-did-it-take-so-long-to-declare-state-of-emergency Comment RT – “Yes, it was the neutralisation of regional government by district and central government in cahoots, that left hills residents so dangerously out on a limb. Without that unseemly plot, collaboration and resources could have been swung in, through ECan CDEM services, from first light on the Tuesday to stop the fires cold. Shameful top-level performances, yet again: so ready to blame front-line fire-fighters, as at the CTV building collapse. Beyond shame, a deregulating City and Beehive are culpable!”
South Christchurch Port Hills, on dark, 15 Feb 2017 – Sugarloaf, Victoria Park and Worsleys Spur all fire-involved, left to right
Thursday 16 February 2017
After lower Sugarloaf had flared it soon went dark, with Victoria Park more flame-free overnight. But a day of downgraded hazard was needed for assurance that the fire was burning out up there, while it burnt on more strongly in the Adventure Park valley below and with the western fire areas more at risk under prevailing easterly wind conditions. A day of extended, thus exaggerated, panic pending better official reports from the fire fronts that were slow in coming – very formal conservatism characterises response from start to finish. ‘Safety first’.
Port Hills fires: Live updates – extract
“12.59am The Port Hill fires have now merged into one, developing significantly during the afternoon and into this evening. At least three additional houses have been destroyed in the area of Worsleys Rd
2am Six people from Pentworth Pl in Westmorland have been evacuated and are sleeping over at Te Hapua, which has been opened for evacuated residents, along with Nga Hau e Wha Marae. It appears most people that have been evacuated have found their own accommodation. In addition to rural fire staff, a group of 86 made up of 50 New Zealand Police and 36 New Zealand Defence Force personnel are working overnight on the Port Hills Fire response. They are doing evacuations, joint patrols and reassuring people in the areas impacted by the fires
3.25am There are still some very active fire fronts up on the Port Hills, but not as many as there were prior to midnight. A large number of fire crews have been on the ground working hard to protect properties overnight. A drop in fire activity can also be attributed to a decrease in temperature and a rise in humidity. Helicopters are expected to start an aerial attack at first light. Approximately 400 households have been evacuated in the areas around Victoria Park/Dyers Pass Road, Worsleys Rd, Westmorland and Kennedys Bush
4.55am Police are now evacuating residents downhill of the Sign of the Takahe on Dyers Pass Rd as far as and including Kiteroa Pl and Pentre Tce. Residents will be contact directly by police who are in the area now knocking on doors. If you feel unsafe, you are advised to self-evacuate. Police have continued to express concerns about traffic and people in the area and directed all non-residents to stay away, keeping it clear for emergency services
6.06am More than 1000 residents have fled their homes and at least eight properties have burned to the ground as a huge wild fire rages on in Christchurch. Several fires have now merged into one which is threatening dense residential housing. The blaze is estimated to have scorched more than 1850ha of land and is still growing.
6.24am The latest report is the fire has spread to the harbour side of Sugar Loaf. Evacuations are continuing on the Port Hills with a total of 450 properties officially evacuated. Others have self-evacuated as the fire spread overnight
6.44am Helicopter crews are starting to rejoin firefighting efforts. Aerial teams could be seen leaving the Christchurch Airport area at daybreak on Thursday
6.46am Civil Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee will arrive in Christchurch on Thursday morning. He has been critical of how long it took for a State of Emergency to be declared and questioned why rural firefighters were in charge of a fire inside the city boundaries.
6.55am Around 126 homes remain without power due to the fire
7.30am Broadcast provider Kordia has activated its disaster recovery plan as the fire engulfs land around Sugar Loaf. It has activated its disaster recovery plan and is transporting spare equipment to Christchurch
7.52am Military help for Christchurch is on standby – but hasn’t yet been asked for. Lieutenant Colonel Rob Loftus said almost 40 Defence Force personnel are on the ground so far. The Defence Force has been helping out with evacuations. Civil Defense minister Gerry Brownlee said it is up to the Fire Service to ask for further help – he is concerned they’ll leave it too late, Newstalk ZB reports
9:22am The Civil Defence bunker at Parliament is being activated
11.19am The impact of the fires on people is starting to be felt. Canterbury Civil Defence Controller John Mackie said they received a report of five incidents from health services. He said health and welfare services are also turning their attention to the psycho-social impact of the fires
11:32am More fire appliances are being called to the Christchurch Adventure Park to help battle the fire
12:12pm Firefighters in the Christchurch Adventure Park have setup monitoring stations at the base of the chairlift and cafe as a contingency plan
12:15pm Flames 6 to 8 metres tall are threatening a house at Kennedys Bush. Two fire crews are on the way
12.17pm Fire crews on Worsleys Rd have lost water pressure and are attempting to get it back
12.45pm Prime Minister Bill English and Gerry Brownlee are in the air surveying the fire scene
4:29pm Firefighters are calling for more water tankers up Kennedys Bush Rd to assist fighting the fire. They have asked for 4WD vehicle specifically. Firefighters have noticed another flare up
7:24pm Cordons remain in place with police and Defence Force staff patrolling
10:09pm ‘While there are still areas burning out of control, the fire is contained within the 2075 hectare area.'” http://www.star.kiwi/2017/02/live-update-day/
Mayors defend actions after Minister Brownlee criticism “The two mayors met with Brownlee today and afterward Dalziel defended the handling of the fire, saying she and Broughton had declared the state of emergency to ensure people took it seriously when told to evacuate rather than because of the need for more resources. ‘We did that together not because it was needed for any resources to be brought to bear but because it was to give people confidence that when the Police told them they were to evacuate, they were to evacuate: this is an emergency.’ She said there were already sufficient resources in place to fight the fire and the state of emergency was called within an hour and a half of the mayors being advised people were being evacuated” http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11802069
Friday 17 February 2017
Editorial: Lack of information on Port Hills fires excruciating “Some will say that when a crisis of this magnitude hits, people need to get on with dealing with it, rather than telling people what is going on. This is misguided. Reliable information is crucial in dangerous times – to calm public anxiety, to mobilise resources from within the community, to tell people to move when they need to, and to warn people to stay away at times. … Fear and hysteria are more likely when people are ill-informed. In Christchurch this week, the state of emergency was declared 48 hours after the fires started, after mass evacuations began and only after a serious escalation of the blazes which might have been foreseen in a worst-case-scenario risk assessment. Civil Defence guidelines state that states of emergency should be declared ‘early rather than late’ – advice which seems to have been ignored in this case. No-one can doubt the bravery and dedication of those on the front lines, but there seems to have been blocked lines of communication at the strategic level. Maybe part of the problem is that New Zealand, a country of just 4.5 million people, has multiple layers of authorities and agencies with sometimes conflicting roles. The fires have burned across the boundaries of Christchurch City and Selwyn District, which is why the state of emergency was declared jointly by mayors Lianne Dalziel and Sam Broughton. How long did it take them to co-ordinate that decision? Could a single authority have done it more quickly? Brownlee had the power to declare an emergency himself, as did the wider-area Civil Defence Emergency Management Group, but they did not do so. The Selwyn Rural Fire Authority was the lead agency in fighting the fires, which seemed incongruous once houses in Christchurch city suburbs began to burn. There has to be a swifter and simpler way of dealing with emergencies, and in letting people know how to react. That needs to be one of the lessons learned from these fires.” http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/89503846/editorial-lack-of-information-on-port-hills-fires-excrutiating
Port Hills fire: ‘Impact is the biggest in NZ history’ “The fire broke out on Monday night and was at it’s peak on Wednesday afternoon when two huge columns of smoke started to build, intensifying the flames and pushing crews to their limit. ‘A lot of people are asking why we weren’t putting water on it while it was burning away,’ said Rural Fire sector boss Phil Crutchley. ‘We were looking at 100,000 kilowatts of temperature per square metre – any water we put on that just evaporated. We just pulled back, it was just too dangerous. There was nothing we could do that would have stopped that.’ As a result, homes were lost and other properties damaged – but he made no apology. The columns had the power of two atomic bombs behind them and there was nothing on earth that could have been done to take the guts out of them.” http://www.star.kiwi/2017/02/port-hills-fire-impact-is-the-biggest-in-nz-history/
Beginning of Port Hills fire: How McCarthy Contractors responded when they first saw smoke “Christchurch Mayor Lianne Dalziel and Selwyn Mayor Sam Broughton conceded there were communication problems between the different fire organisations in Canterbury, and declaring a state of emergency took too long.” http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11802653
Firefighters were sent home early from Christchurch fire response, union says “New Zealand Professional Firefighters Union Secretary Derek Best has called for an independent inquiry. He said firefighters were sent home for 90 minutes at nightfall on Monday after they had contained but not extinguished the fire. Just an hour and a half later they were called back to the scene, but it was too late. … an inquiry was needed not just into the fire services but into the entire disaster response. ‘Really the same issues from the Christchurch earthquake are still present.’ … Early Valley Rd homeowner Ken McKenzie believed … ‘If action had been taken quicker and we’d got more resources to the site … it should have been able to be stopped before it headed towards town. ‘If they got helicopters and bulldozers in, it could have been stopped. The issue I have is pretty much the organisation, the level above – there’s something drastically wrong.'” http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/89546268/firefighters-were-sent-home-early-from-christchurch-fire-response-union-says
Analysis: What could have been done to stop the Port Hills blaze? “Canterbury Civil Defence controller John Mackie says officials were ‘just going by the book’ when leaving the initial response to the fires to Selwyn’s rural fire team, rather than Christchurch officials. ‘That’s prescribed in the act… the responsibility for the rural fire lies on the authority in whose area it starts – even though it may cross a boundary, that jurisdiction doesn’t change.’ Mackie says Canterbury’s Civil Defence group set up an emergency operations centre early on Wednesday morning, as Governors Bay came under threat, and made the case for a state of emergency when evacuations started to increase later that afternoon. Christchurch Mayor Lianne Dalziel denies officials were too slow to declare a state of emergency, saying work on the declaration began ‘from the moment we were advised that people were being evacuated from their houses’. There was no issue of firefighters lacking in numbers, Mackie says – it was simply that they felt they had the fire under control, before the weather began to conspire against them. ‘The rural fire officers were saying that they had ample resources available: it was only when [there was an] escalation of the number of people being evacuated, and the [increased] risk to urban residents, that was the main reason for the declaration.’ But couldn’t there have been more helicopters with monsoon buckets in the air, or firefighters on the ground? Not according to Selwyn Mayor Sam Broughton, who says there are more choppers available than there is room for them. ‘We’re at saturation point in the sky – there’s not another helicopter that could fit in the space safely.’ … Labour Port Hills MP Ruth Dyson says lessons from the response to the fire can wait until after it is extinguished for good.” http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/89466598/analysis-what-could-have-been-done-to-stop-the-port-hills-blaze
Mike Hosking critiques Civil Defence response, Seven Sharp 17 Feb 2017
In disasters, scale overwhelms sensibility. Reporting can far from keep pace. So many moving parts and uncertainties are involved that synchronisation is not possible. Responders are overwhelmed, trying to face down the unleashed hazard. Every scrap of resource is needed. This can include many, many volunteers. These are ground factors that will never be fully known, understood or controlled at a distance.
Hosking and Brownlee’s wish for centralised civil defence would be to put many more people in much greater harms way, without the ability to confront and respond to their own challenges immediately, directly and collectively, on the ground they discover and face. That is why what the mis-leaders want hasn’t been the case.
The regional system of response escalation simply needs to be understood, supported and made to work. This starts with identifying and removing the particular empowered obstacles to regional civil defence who oppose and inhibit it, to great public detriment. Look to the statements and behaviour of all the local mayors we’ve had especially. City has consistently undermined region, so far. Unacceptable.
Saturday 18 February 2017
Christchurch City Council and Civil Defence held a first large meeting with evacuated residents, in Spreydon’s South-West Baptist Church gymnasium on the Saturday morning ending a fiery week. Attendees were mostly from Kennedy’s Bush and very distressed. Easterly winds still held their homes most at risk, that they hadn’t really understood until this point. Recently-buried asbestos on private land was of great concern and news to most residents too; ECan fronted to say this had been approved. Every evacuated area was represented at the meeting where information flow was roundly criticised and a single online up-to-date source demanded; also, hourly email updates from council on what was happening. These started around mid-day the next day, semi-hourly. Collated: https://ccc.govt.nz/the-council/newsline/show/1406
Council’s primary goal out of this meeting was to break it down into more manageable, evacuated street by street meetings (which took place the following Thursday, 23 Feb). Next to the fire, residents were being hosed down now. They were understandably angered by inept emergency response leading to property damage, disruption and loss. After 90 minutes many were were walking out though and an outside corridor large informal meet-up ensued. The city mayor wanted to join it as the back of the gym audience hadn’t been connecting with the front, unheard due to poor microphone sharing and crowd engagement. Dalziel was peremptorily reminded by those still seated though, “We’re the ones paying attention!” and had to continue on-stage for a later closing.
Canterbury Medical Officer of Health, Alistair Humphreys addresses fire evacuees, 18 Feb 2017
NZ Fire Service, Rural Fire and Civil Defence etc reps answer fire evacuee questions, 18 Feb 2017
John Key’s government had sacked the wrong council, for private profit, early 2010. A regional response would have been more powerful, sooner, with likely much better results than this very obvious fire response debacle.
Communications and cordons heavily criticised at Port Hills meeting “Dalziel promised that the council would review the response and do better in the future. The meeting came a day after the professional firefighters union told media they could have extinguished the fire on Monday, had they not been sent home for 90 minutes.” http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/89559332/communications-and-cordons-heavily-criticised-at-port-hills-meeting
While Christchurch burns, Wellington talks “‘bringing together rural, urban, volunteer and paid urban firefighters into one national organisation for the first time’. The new Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Fenz) will mean ‘a much better standard of service delivery, a much better deal for our rural and volunteer firefighters and a much better deal for New Zealanders’ … The response in Christchurch suggested an uncoordinated system. Who should have called a state of emergency and when, exactly? Why, Brownlee asked, were the rural fire services leading things? ‘I’m perplexed as to why you’ve got the Selwyn District or rural firefighters running things inside Christchurch City Council district boundaries’ … The updated law, after advice from firefighters, will clarify that letting a fire burn can be a valid response to a fire. … only NZ First was opposed to moving this legislation on to the next phase. … Two reports from Australia have convinced him [Clayton Mitchell] that mergers of urban and rural services favour the urban culture at the expense of rural. Do we risk driving the rural volunteers away?” [emphasis added] http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/89488611/while-christchurch-burns-wellington-talks
Mike Yardley: Response to Christchurch fires from officials ‘rudderless’ “as the past seven days have unfolded, a multitude of alarm bells have been rightly rung about the cack-handed response and somewhat rudderless leadership from officialdom. The acting Civil Defence Minister, Gerry Brownlee, was far from alone in feeling ‘perplexed’ at the belated nature of the state of civil emergency being declared. Social media lit up on Wednesday afternoon, as the inferno raging across the Port Hills seemingly galloped out of control. Hundreds of residents vented their increasing dismay and disbelief at the apparent failure of the Selwyn and Christchurch mayors to get to grips with the enormity of the ever-billowing threat. Individuals were pleading with Mayor Dalziel and senior city councillors, via their Facebook pages, to urgently declare a state of emergency. It took a further two hours after Westmorland was suddenly evacuated at 4pm, before the declaration was issued. Some hillside residents had packed and were ready to self-evacuate at 1pm. They could see the situation gravely deteriorating, first-hand.” http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/89612043/mike-yardley-response-to-christchurch-fires-from-officials-rudderless
– Yardley’s anti-ECan positioning has long blinded him to insight into defective regional response. Use what we have, don’t hinder it! Yardley’s wanting “declaration issued much earlier in the afternoon” is a joke. First thing Tuesday was the right time, the only time to have hit the fires from the air with everything possible and cauterise the threat. A declaration then would have been entirely reasonable, given the extreme dry hills risk at this time and that fire spanned two district boundaries – the ECan CDEM action trigger, purportedly. Declaration early Tuesday and military resources were available as regional council options, but ECan naysayers like Mike and Gerry have it firmly in a sealed box, held captive and useless. At least Huntsbury remained safe. Not.
Port Hills fire – Update Tuesday 12:20pm: State of Emergency extended
“‘this remains a serious situation that requires a significant and coordinated multi-agency response,’ the Mayor said. ‘While the State of Emergency terminates tomorrow evening, we are mindful of the significance of 22 February to the Canterbury community and as a result we agreed it was appropriate to consider the status of the State of Emergency today.’ The extension automatically lasts for seven days, but can be terminated earlier. The Joint Committee will meet on Friday to consider the transition to recovery. That will be an appropriate time to reconsider the need for the State of Emergency to remain in place” https://ccc.govt.nz/the-council/newsline/show/1406
Christchurch Civil Defence
Port Hills Fire – Update #8 – 5.30pm
“Fire progress: The Fire Service is pleased to announce that good progress has been made in controlling the fire in the Worselys Road area. Patrols will continue in the area, but crews will no longer be actively working in the area unless called in for a flare up. Residents are asked to help by being vigilant and to DIAL 111 IMMEDIATELY IF THEY SEE ANY SIGN OF THE FIRE REIGNITING. ‘Our crews have made great progress and we’re pleased to be able to pull back from the Worsleys area, but we really need people to keep a watch on things for us,’ said Fire Service Liaison Officer Bruce Irvine. ‘The more eyes we have out there looking the better.’ Fire services are continuing operations in other areas affected by the fire.”
Christchurch Civil Defence
Port Hills Fire – Update #3 – 1pm
“Fire operations: Fire services advise that 90% of the fire perimeter area is now considered to be controlled. Controlled is defined as bare earth or blacked out ground for at least 10 metres.”
Residents Update:
Port Hills Fire – Update #4 – 1.30pm
“Free GP visits are being offered to people affected by the Port Hills fires, at the discretion of their General Practice team. This includes people who worked on or are still working on fire control and recovery operations. The offer period covers the 2 months from 13 February 2017, the day the fire started.”
Fire perimeter now fully contained and controlled “Fire authorities working on the Port Hills fire are now confident the fire is substantially under control and are withdrawing overnight patrols.” https://ccc.govt.nz/the-council/newsline/show/1406
Mayors’ war of words with Brownlee over Port Hills state of emergency “Mr Brownlee said the most accurate information about the fire on Wednesday came from the media – not officials. Those in charge of the fire response have ‘got to learn’ from this experience, Mr Brownlee said. ‘I was in Wellington, not Christchurch.’ Prime Minister Bill English also confirmed there will be a review of the Civil Defence response and the delay in declaring a state of emergency.” http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2017/02/mayors-war-of-words-with-brownlee-over-port-hills-state-of-emergency.html
Port Hills fire: 1000 people forced to evacuate “For the second time, James Frost has lost a home to disaster in Christchurch. He said he found out at 11pm on Wednesday that the fire had reached his evacuated home.. while most police officers were good, one of his flatmates was left in tears because of a police officer who ‘didn’t have the people skills to deal with the scenario'” http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2017/02/port-hills-blaze-evacuees-forced-to-leave-everything-behind.html
1. We all mean well, at least initially, and struggle to express this, struggling to exist with others.
2. As an intensely competitive species, with social context from the start, our struggle can employ critical thought, interactive dialogue and peaceful techniques, or default to violence (habituated from hunting meat).
3. We want and need to work together, the question is how.
4. Compassionate, affinity and spiritual emotions seek more than second place.
5. Agreement on anything is amongst our greatest challenges, words always fail us.
6. Religion emerged in human history to forge large-scale agreements, especially in law for peace.
7. Agreement, truth and belief are related within culture, that scientific method tests into known facts.
8. Belief and faith were culturally-sanctioned agreements pre-dating science and survive subjectively.
9. Religion was not only the law we had, before we developed secular, rights-based law.
10. Religion was also the science we had, before we developed science.
11. Religion was the medicine we had, before we developed medicine.
12. Religion was the politics we had, before we developed politics.
13. Religion was the arts form we had, before we re-liberated the arts.
14. Other forms of all these things existed before we developed religion.
15. Religion filled many gaps for many years, before we improved the knowledge and expertise.
16. Religion made systematic a compassionate choice for the earliest organised societies, for good.
17. Religion was the original statecraft, and as such is inapplicable and unavailable, locally today.
18. Hope for a better world that conforms with derived belief has many still clinging to religion.
19. The world and universe do not conform with belief, human or supernatural, being composed of discernible material facts, from the atom up (not from ‘heaven’ down – metaphysics are illusory).
20. The material world (in human form) makes belief possible, not the other way around – no super-human being made the world, to suit itself, or actually exists to ‘create’ belief.
21. The growth of religion has been primarily the growth of human unity of purpose, always needed, through common points of belief.
22. Religious study teaches us things about human unity that nothing else can, our major driver.
23. Religion is easily misunderstood, undervalued and dismissed, as a social fact, to our detriment.
24. Religion has always been exploited to justify evil killing, not killing evil, which needs to cease.
25. Our tribal nature explains most about religion and transcendence it can bring.
26. What makes a god real in one culture is the same for every god in every other culture.
27. Faith as a unifying mechanism merges many gods into one god, logically and historically.
28. From many gods (polytheism, superstitious causation theory) came one god (monotheism, politically unified superstitious causation, enabling unified-market economic prosperity).
29. Superstitious belief held science, markets and industrial transformation back, unsuccessfully in western Europe – until the Reformation (battles for diversity of belief).
30. Amongst the nastiest people you are ever likely to meet can be those professing a religious faith, when it comes to competitiveness on the material plane. Viz. global bloodshed: insincere.
[Fourth draft – more to come – thanks for visiting]
The New Zealand Labour Party just showed voting is not about democracy but their bureaucratic privilege, not about principle but only corporate power.
The 2016 local elections confirmed Labour corruption as the greatest non-natural hazard to New Zealand communities – the adjunct reflection of Tory corruption, bogus presentation of empty alternative. This truth makes them unelectable, ever again, and explains declining voter turnout and resident disengagement: Labour deviously monopolises community politics for any and all available wins to their spirit-crushing machine.
Communities will not find ways forward – out of increasing corporate control, unaffordable housing, loss of natural environment and growing natural hazards – except through electorally smashing the NZLP then starting over again in communities’ interests instead. 2017 is almost soon enough for this essential project.
Various fake lefts tell you otherwise, to try choosing Labour again to displace National, but let us look at facts.
Labour-rort government only gets worse the harder you look at it.
Another example here, where a campaigning Karolin Potter, Spreydon-Heathcote Community Board chair, demonstrates dishonest hypocrisy for People’s Choice at a Keep New Zealand Beautiful local clean-up event:
Addington Times October 2016 p1, Karolin Potter in bottom left picture in blue
Potter’s Labour-dominated board had withdrawn all support for KNZB in 2015, to spitefully and corruptly prevent one Board member from ever working with it. This officially appointed SHCB KNZB rep had to pay their own way to the national KNZB conference in Christchurch that year, with zero Board support. By comparison, Potter claimed an all-expenses, disability-enabled long weekend hotel trip to Waitangi, Bay of Islands, for the LGNZ conference in 2014 – a privilege of high office with Labour. The SHCB KNZB rep was the only SHCB member who attended every one of the SHCB 2013-2016 term meetings, working diligently.
The first things people need to know are:
a) How much ECan money has Working Waters Trust ever received – by date and amount?
b) What ECan staff are or have been a part of Working Waters Trust?
If there are material answers to these questions then electoral fraud has just been conducted by the NZ Labour Party. Because the director of Working Waters Trust, Lan Pham, has just been elected to ECan councillor on Labour’s behalf – perhaps using rate-payer resource. We need to know. Is this council staff or contractors determining public representation?! A shocking corporate turn of events.
Pham’s fraud is well-documented in “the People’s Choice” campaign statements, where ‘defending democracy’ was the last of their core policy trio: clean water, better public transport, “a democratic ECan”. Having had the opportunity to choose solidarity against National’s unwarranted deposing of the 2007-elected ECan council, to support one representative of that council in running again, Pham chose not to. Instead Pham took personal advantage of National’s coup. But not only that, Pham directed voters AWAY from solidarity with the elected ECan council representative, in crooked Labour team- and self-serving manner:
Pham’s call here, over which four ECan candidates voters should choose – to NOT support representation from the deposed ECan council – advantaged her Labour-backed team by splitting the vote such that all three People’s Choice candidates then gained election. And, it was highly illegal to have influenced voters in this way.
Pham’s electoral offence is described at left here, from ECan candidate handbook p.31.
Lan Pham is therefore a false democrat, undeserving of an elected public role, at the least for this published prejudice. Pham’s campaign action, on behalf of ‘the firm’, shows precisely why Environment Canterbury is so disliked and so distrusted by so many people. e.g. “Cattle in Christchurch river were on Canterbury regional council’s land”, 12 October 2016 – stuff.co.nz/environment/85202980/cattle-in-christchurch-river-were-on-canterbury-regional-councils-land – The many false democrats who have ‘liked’ this electoral offence is equally revealing.
Labour’s dirty tactics, in replacing community reps with council staff or contractors, is to achieve one thing only: corporate monopoly at local political level. Never to listen and share or to innovate, never to allow a community voice. Always to dictate. In the ECan case it is to dishonestly claim back leadership in clean-water activism where they had lost it, quite rightly, in 2007. Labour is fully responsible for irrigation and intensive farming development in Canterbury and its polluting effects. And they know it. Rotten fouls like this, like Lan Pham’s here, are futile attempts to recover the Labour reputation and to overtly cover their highly polluting tracks.
So how did the Labour ECan campaign appearances roll? Lan Pham never appeared, except by remote video, at any candidate forum: she wasn’t in the South Island until Ocober 1st. A swathe of scientific helpers, likers and supporters pushed Pham to online/media victory. This dragged the rest of her team forward, regardless of what little they knew or had to say. Cynthia Roberts decried the Canterbury Water Management Strategy work (of the previous elected council). Steve Lowndes repeated John Key’s lie, that the previous elected council was ‘quagmired with 7:7 drawn votes’ (there was only one 7:7 vote during the 2007-2010 ECan term and that was still a decision, for the status quo). Lowndes extended Labour’s election fraud by campaigning with the ECan corporate logo very prominently on his website (unless the ECan logo design copyright belongs to him?) …
Steve Lowndes ECan campaign screenshot, June to October 2016
The Press had picked the four 2016 ECan winners at the very outset of campaigning. Using a two-day ultimatum for comment to publish, here they cemented their gatekeeper choice in. The Press is yet to be honest and add what was sent to them on the third day: https://communityvoice.nz/2016/09/25/the-press-interview-23-9-16/
From this identified basis of bias, misrepresentation and outright lying, we can understand exactly what the minority local vote of 2016 represents. No one else, with an honest brain, believes in the local governance. Myth-makers rule. 38.29% of eligible voters had a say on ECan and 38.34% on the Christchurch City candidates.
Thus, having understood the Christchurch 2016 vote in detail – what it represents and what largely drove it – we know precisely what governs our day-to-day lives. We, the people, strongly need local ethical upgrade and the ability to contribute, for moving forward.
Open and independent, balanced and reasoning minds are required for good regional governance.
Heat over bad water is rising generally, around Havelock North’s current crisis. The larger water quantity, population and risk in Canterbury mean that every tool available to resolve the same challenge must be applied here – and this especially includes democracy. ‘Many eyes keep bugs shallower’, as the open-source software movement says. Let us all be enabled to act to preserve water quality, essentially.
Water users will defend their interests, the stronger the greater these are. Political interests step in taking sides, which muddies the water further.
Fish, fowl or four-legs? we may well ask – all are farmed from the natural resource.
The Environment Minister is correct identifying a, if not the, major contributor to faecal contamination of urban waterways – that city dwellers get blamed for but cannot change!
Fishers and fowlers maintain hunting stock at maximum possible limits. But more city dwellers want the very messy canada geese gone from river banks, boating infrastructure and estuary and cleaner local rivers.
Thus Fish and Game oppose game-bird culls and leave Christchurch with the crap: both green poos and water quality blame. So it does not wash at all for ‘environmentalists’ to side with farmers of the rivers and lakes (Fish and Game base) expediently, to make their case and too-easy-allies.
Now Fish and Game claim a place at the Environment Canterbury regulatory table for their farming interests too? Who is this helping really? One more example is enough.
The hazard-prone Opuha Dam in South Canterbury enabled much more dairy irrigation there – love it or hate it for its effects.
Fish and Game’s position is to support the dam, to steady the Opuha River flow for their trout. At this point the argument ends and I leave you to decide your own votes and whose interests you really want served in regional decision-making. Pick those with no interest materially different to your own: no conflict. Pick pure values.
Should it come as no surprise that state broadcast media sides with national government choosing winners in this debate? If we can have no trust in Radio New Zealand or The Press to avoid bias, what use are they to the public in greater emergency?
Water quality, real story-telling and this election are about one and the same thing: integrity.
For the only former Canterbury councillor running again in 2016 and therefore a referendum on central government’s treatment of Canterbury democracy and water equity, see CommunityVoice.nz
Quoting a certain prime minister for New Zealand journalism’s benefit, “Get some guts!”
It has been six long, troubled years since Canterbury lost regional democracy. This year it is being allowed back in partial form by central government. We must celebrate and utilise the consultative opportunity this change of course provides. Given the mounting challenges that Canterbury faces, it is at least worth asking, can democracy provide greater solutions? The answer is undoubtedly yes.
Ko Waimakariri te awa, Ka Pakihi Whakatekateka o Waitaha – the Waimakariri River, Canterbury
Government intervention at Environment Canterbury (ECan) in 2010 turned long-standing threat into action.
Post-Muldoon, post-SMP farming subsidy, Labour governments had forged rural recovery on an intensive dairy model, birthing export co-operative giant Fonterra as one pinnacle. Growth upon growth characterised an industry fast becoming the nation’s leader.
In Canterbury the most ‘fertile ground’ for dairy expansion was found, by tapping underground water and applying nitrogenous fertiliser to former dry-lands. But this massive growth spurt had natural limits – aquifers are finite and their increased depletion, combined with more fertiliser and waste run-off, began to degrade surface water. This the public noticed and said so loudly.
Could Labour keep Canterbury dairy growth going, against natural limits and growing public concern? ‘Yes’, said the Labour-led regional council, to Labour government pressure – with new water storage, irrigation schemes and environmental mitigations.
‘Get on with it quicker’ said an incoming National government from 2008, soon throwing the elected council out and replacing them with appointed commissioners.
Tangata whenua, the indigenous ‘people of the land’, rightly wanted more say and democracy was poorly delivering it. Appointments made with iwi / tribal corporate Ngai Tahu could start resolving this also.
The first remedy, in the return to regional democracy, will be ensuring representation belongs equally to tangata whenua. The primary challenge facing ECan, therefore, is how to structure a return to democratic representation that guarantees the appropriate kaitiaki / resource stewardship role of Ngai Tahu.
The next challenge being, is there enough water for all users wanting it? This is a matter of careful sharing, and in good governance.
The Canterbury Water Management Strategy (CWMS) was developed, and in 2009 launched, by an elected council collaborating with the region’s mayors. Commissioners have been rolling the CWMS out and founding its water Zone Implementation Committees and Plans (ZIPs). Keeping these Zone Committees viable is a function of good democracy – people need to believe and participate in ECan’s resource management plan as a whole.
It is hard to believe trouble greater than rising ‘water wars’ could displace these in Canterbury, but one did – devastating earthquakes.
Now we have seen the capacity for communities to collaborate and recover from deadly calamity, how do we optimise this capacity as a region? ECan co-ordinates local emergency responses and we need reminding and preparedness for what is forecast to come: the Alpine Fault poses a major threat every 330 years or so, the last rupture having been in 1717, around magnitude 8. Are we ready for ‘the big one’ here yet?
ECan’s technical capabilities are tested daily – a very large area to cover, containing some 70% of New Zealand’s freshwater and the nation’s second-biggest city, Otautahi Christchurch. Over half a million people live here which generates transport challenges. Without adequate staffing or accountable public representatives, resources can fall through the cracks and when they do it is scandalous: e.g. Environment Canterbury informs police, Serious Fraud Office of potential taxi fraud news today, story on RadioNZ with Checkpoint interview.
This echoes the finding Millions of litres of water illegally taken: Is ECan doing enough? in June – technically competent elected watch-dogs are needed to raise and maintain a higher level of vigilance. ‘Many eyes, shallower bugs’ is the credo of the open-source software movement and both central and local government need to learn from this international community, fast: the power of engaged communities to help solve the most ‘wicked problems’ on Earth.
For improvements to happen quicker in 2016, I have joined the local election campaign Community Voice .nz – Do join us, do speak – for a safer, more collaborative and prosperous region of Waitaha, Canterbury NZ!
Kia ora
Rik
Updates
A Hawke’s Bay water contamination crisis was erupting at the time of this post:
“Both Hawke’s Bay and Canterbury are among the driest and most drought-prone areas in New Zealand and both rely largely on aquifers for drinking water. Both have braided rivers too, although those in Hawke’s Bay are on a smaller scale than Canterbury.
A rush of irrigation over recent decades in Canterbury has led to significant environmental degradation, including serious contamination of some rural water supplies, loss of biodiversity and transformation of landscapes. Democracy has been damaged too, as development pressures led to the Government sacking the elected Environment Canterbury regional councillors and their replacement with appointed commissioners.
The commissioners promised to improve water quality. They have failed and water quality has continued to decline. Some rural water supplies, including Selwyn, Hinds and Hurunui, are contaminated with high levels of nitrogen and pathogens, leading to people becoming sick.
Canterbury now has the unenviable record of having the highest rate of campylobacter infections in the world, along with 17,000 notified cases of gastroenteritis a year and up to 34,000 cases of waterborne illness annually, according to Canterbury District Health Board figures.
Rates of animal sourced disease such as campylobacter are higher in areas of Canterbury with more intensive animal farming. A Canterbury District Health Board commissioned assessment of the proposed Central Plains Water Scheme found potential health risks to Cantabrians outweighed the probable financial benefits to a few people. Hawke’s Bay should not make the same mistakes as Canterbury. It needs development, particularly in agriculture, that is sustainable and protects water quality and the other natural treasures that contribute so much to the region’s quality of life.”
– Amelia Geary: We want to be able to swim in our rivers, NZ Herald, 31 August 2016
Beginning as conscientious-objector, anti-conscription, trade-union federalists in 1916, only to become conscripting and strike-breaking war leaders a generation later, the New Zealand Labour Party (NZLP) emerged masters of political somersault as government from 1935. Their Federation of Labour of 1937, under waterfront heavy Fintan Patrick Walsh, became gangster enforcers of the Left through war effort, and, confronting Stalinist groups, crushed diversity out of New Zealand alternative politics for decades to come.[1] Labour hegemony, over the politics of opposing capital, maintains the same hard and devious tactics to this day, betraying and subordinating worker interests to capital. The NZLP functional role is to actively dissolve any real opposition to capital. This applies right down to community level, wherever obliged. This post is a study of the underhand methods by which Labour-aligned bureaucrats keep themselves in power, through dirty stranglehold on communities, to constitute a corrupting influence upon Christchurch City Council (CCC) local government.
The socialist reforms that swept social-democrats to power in the 1930s have long since degraded with descent into social-fascism, such that ‘reforms’ are now typically, in the economic sense, mostly negative for working people and favour the corporate elite (that includes Labour).[2] Examples are state asset privatisation, real wage erosion and housing turned into an inflated market commodity, all under NZLP rule. (Labour has capitalised through multiple home ownerships bought via parliamentary careers; steady money has corrupted them collectively, thus creating a classic gang).
Which brings them to today’s water politics. The NZLP response to the rural downturn and lost subsidies of the 1970s and 80s was Helen Clark, from a Waikato dairy farm background, and mass dairy farm conversion with creation of Fonterra milk corporate co-op. With Clark as Prime Minister, new export industry required new sources of supply and in Canterbury – the country’s largest region with the bulk of its available freshwater resource – transformation began. Water demand expanded until it exhausted all usable supply from rivers, streams and wells. Then new irrigation, for pasture on difficult dry land, would require water storage and new publicly-funded supply schemes. Enter the Canterbury Water Management Strategy, when environmental impacts and strong public protest against them had all begun to hit home too. But a change to National government in 2008 allowed it to claim the landscape conversion was not fast enough, nor the mitigation effort. So National replaced the Labour-balanced regional council with appointed business commissioners, lacking much originality. What could the NZLP then do?
Labour, also lacking originality, has picked up National’s refrain: that city-dwellers should be concerned first and foremost with urban river water quality and not rural – ‘they are to blame’ after all. So Labour wants all the credit and publicity for this diversionary work, turning it into a new propaganda industry to keep itself in the news and somehow relevant. Of course Labour agrees with National – that the public is to have no real choice.
In our local neighbourhood, Labour have begun the Opawaho-Heathcote River Network, with themselves in exclusive charge. They will decide which community groups can participate, so the one I am part of – the Cashmere Residents’ Association – has been shut out; because it is independent of Labour, and, mostly, of the Labour-run city council. Residents will be stopped from voluntarily coordinating their own river-bank clean-up work, to subordinate it to Labour’s, and council staff will be drawn in to muzzle them and force them to advertise a ‘river network’ that they have been actively excluded from. What?! The consistency of this dictation machine is very anti-democratic and scary: it compromises staff ethics of impartiality, atrociously.
Labour’s social-fascist method is to hijack community initiative, to gain publicity and credit for other people’s work. They will hijack community newsletters to get their message out, to increase their influence at community expense. Council staff will help make this happen. What?!
Social-fascists (Labour) are not interested in community; they are interested in controlling communities. The social-fascist interest is directed over communities, through attaining positions of power. They maintain highly effective electoral machines, to elevate their members into positions of authority over the communities that they exploit parasitically. Social-fascists act to disorganise communities, to neutralise them as potential competitors to the Labour Party apparatus, and to substitute their social-fascist voice, opinions and decisions, for the community itself. They do this through targeting and monopolising local positions of council power, especially.
The Opawaho-Heathcote River Network is linked to the Avon Heathcote Estuary Ihutai Trust, recipient of significant council funds. But residents’ groups have the option of subscribing to the long-standing Christchurch Estuary Association, as an alternative; they are not obliged to simply follow the council-sponsored Trust. They can embark on water issue campaigns voluntarily, even their own, autonomously… in theory. In reality, the Labour-run council removes choice (like National does at regional level).
When the (ex-Labour) Christchurch Mayor asked recently for community views on proposed further research into the possible flood-control value of a tidal barrier for the Estuary, to supplement potential stop-bank work, she claimed ‘both the Estuary trusts rejected it’ as one reason for turning it down. This was a lie. Just the council-sponsored Trust opposed further study, whereas the public volunteer-run Estuary Association supported it. The Mayor’s office had asked for the association’s opinion but she herself did not read it or report it correctly.
Public choice, and effective democracy, demands quite a clean-up of the Christchurch City Council. Bullies, out!
[2] Social-fascism, from the social democracy era, is what defeated overt fascism for the imperialist West in the 1940s – a ‘softer, kinder’ variety of fascism that chose a different and ultimately victorious side in the Middle East oil politics, for rebuilding depression- and war-ravaged capitalism (e.g. the Roosevelt US, that had its own internment camps – for Japanese). Born of militarised societies, social-fascism remains a bulwark of capitalist imperialism, elected to government periodically on the democratic cycle. Out of the fascist era, only variants could compete and survive the state struggle for existence, then to now. This explains the violent growth of Stalinism, that matched attacks upon Russia and China on their own terms, producing stable national entities for the post-fascist era. ‘Social-fascism’ also describes these dictator states, as non-democratic but from degenerated communism. tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/162780/roosevelt-japanese-internment
Social-fascists, from a century of party machine development and many decades experience of governmental power, have a fanatical sense of entitlement. As the established second choice to wealthy nationalists, they know that top office has for generations been within ready reach, with patience and careful plotting. They simply must be the alternative to the nationalists and need not be substantively different (but meet the political pull of the media-created ‘centre’). This has warped social-democrats into mini-nationalists who are unprincipled, unethical and untrustworthy in all their political actions. Social-fascists have corrupt psychopathology that renders them incapable of recognising the betrayal and damage they do to communities, while propelling themselves on to assumed power. There is no way forward for struggling communities but to demolish and rebuild social-democrat (social-fascist) impetus, from the ground up. Waimarie.
Update 23-05-16
That the Opawaho-Heathcote River Clean-up is primarily for propaganda purposes is underscored by the fact that one week later it was being repeated, in part, by a different group:
Noting a return of readers to my blog today, probably looking for New Zealand earthquake analysis, I will rattle this post off quickly, as a catch-up on a previously strong theme to my writing. Then I will take a good long walk to relax. As should we all.
Having accurately forecast, to within 50 minutes, a magnitude 4.7 Christchurch earthquake yesterday, what are my afterthoughts about this? Under-earth events continue for the country and are detailed here: “#Masterton mag 5.2 #eqnz this morning is not alone..”[1] (Read research at footnote link). The title is only more fitting, a month to the day since it was written, when there have been two 5.2 magnitude earthquakes, this new morning. (Ironically, says the Moon Man?)
Stunning, really. Awesome Earth!
But what is the big picture, if I am asked?
Well, it’s not good. Not for New Zealand, one of the newest land masses and nations on the planet – it is likely to have to start again. In our lifetime? It seems / I would say, perhaps yes. Because a 330-year Alpine Fault cycle is sitting at year 299, approximately.
The tectonic motion we have begun to experience as a constant factor of the post-colonial state has the capacity to practically destroy it. In my opinion. A catastrophe so large is built into this land, Aotearoa – Land of the Long White [volcanic] Cloud – that it will surely cripple us one day. Soon? Hard to say. Why? It looks like this:
Current south-east/central North Island quakes are signs that the Australian Plate it is on is moving, a little bit more. When it finally gets going properly it will be a huge leap south-east, and this will spread the central plateau / Kermadec Arc enough for the Taupo super-volcano to explode again. That will obliterate the central North Island and disable both Auckland and Wellington.
What will initiate this calamity, however, will be almost as bad for the South Island – a magnitude 8+ slippage of the Alpine Fault, disabling Christchurch and the then-isolated West Coast. This (long-term) ‘regular’ event constitutes the letting-off of the not-quite slow-moving tectonic brake, that is the Southern Alps, that keeps this geological system ‘stable’. A relative term. Long calm will resettle again, after many many large and small aftershocks.
Will Otago-Southland be left standing to pull us through? Let us hope so.
There is no way we can recover from this imminent (in our lifetime?) surety without massive international support and massive sacrifice of sovereignty.
Let us prepare for that transitional step now. However we are best able to.
But it may be that the next magnitude 8+ Alpine Fault earthquake does not release Taupo super-volcano.[2] Let us hope so. ‘Not yet please.’ We are not ready. …
Is the Taupo volcano on a 5, 6 or 7 Alpine Fault-slip cycle? Some decade on from now, all New Zealand will be discovering this, as-yet hidden fact, together. It will be our darkest hour. Human spirit will pull through.
“A team of researchers is studying the volcano so better response plans can be put in place in case of a large eruption. The Earthquake Commission said damage from the last time the volcano erupted – almost 1800 years ago – would be large enough to destroy the central North Island…” radionz.co.nz/news/regional/305214/scientists-prepare-for-lake-taupo-eruption
Understand that the Taupo Volcanic Zone, stretching from Mount Ruapehu to north of White Island, marks the southern pin of the broad Kermadec Arc and basin, a massive slow-spreading rift in the Earth that forever thins its crust. From this steady motion – eastwards, of the Australian Plate – re-eruption of Taupo Volcano is inevitable. It isn’t the centre of the North Island for no reason – it explains why the island is above water. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taupo_Volcanic_Zone
The 5th most explosive volcano event known to human scientific records:
Name: Whakamaru
Zone: Taupo Volcanic Zone
Location: New Zealand, North Island
Notes: Whakamaru Ignimbrite/Mount Curl Tephra
Years ago (approx.): 340,000
Ejecta bulk volume (approx.): 2,000 km³ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervolcano#VEI_8
“The Ōruanui eruption (about 26,500 years ago) covered much of the central North Island with ignimbrite, up to 200 metres deep. Ash fallout was spread by the wind over the entire North Island, much of the South Island, and a large area east of New Zealand, including the Chatham Islands. About 1,200 cubic kilometres of pumice and ash were rapidly ejected. This caused a large area of land to collapse, forming the caldera basin now filled by Lake Taupō.”
…”Big bang – The Ōruanui eruption was so enormous that it is hard to visualise. In only a few days or weeks it ejected enough material to construct three Ruapehu-sized cones. After the eruption, the new lake gradually filled to a level 140 metres above the present lake. The lake broke out to the north, resulting in a huge flood. For several thousand years the Waikato River flowed northwards into the Hauraki Gulf, but it later changed its course to flow through the Hamilton lowlands to the Tasman sea.”
Then, …”Taupō eruption – The most recent major eruption of Taupō volcano took place in late summer–early autumn around 200 AD, from vents near Horomatangi Reefs (now submerged). The eruption produced a towering ash column, resulting in tephra-fall deposits over a wide area from Hamilton to Gisborne. The airfall deposits were much thicker to the east of Taupō because the eruption column was blown in that direction by strong westerly winds. The eruption column was followed by a devastating pyroclastic flow, blanketing a roughly circular area within 80 kilometres of Lake Taupō with ignimbrite, and destroying all life in its path. The ground-hugging pyroclastic flow appears to be one of the most powerful ever recorded, and was able to overtop Mt Tongariro and the Kaimanawa mountains, climbing 1,500 metres in a matter of minutes. The outlet of Lake Taupō was again blocked during the eruption, and the lake level rose to 34 metres above its present height, forming a widespread terrace. The lake eventually broke out in a huge flood whose effects can be traced for over 200 kilometres downstream, and include boulder beds and buried forests.” http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/volcanoes/page-5
That is, the same most recent was, the ‘Hatepe eruption’: “considered New Zealand’s largest eruption during the last 20,000 years.. ejected some 120 km3 (29 cu mi).. of which 30 km3 (7.2 cu mi) was ejected in the space of a few minutes. This makes it one of the most violent eruptions [on Earth] in the last 5000 years.. Tsunami deposits of the same age have been found on the central New Zealand coast, evidence that the eruption caused local tsunamis” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatepe_eruption
“Radiocarbon dating indicates an uneven spacing of Taupo’s eruptions, from decades to thousands of years apart. This makes it difficult to forecast when the next eruption will occur and how big it will be.” http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/volcanoes/page-5
Update 4/6/2016
“Magma chamber blamed for Bay of Plenty earthquake swarm.. study found the previously unrecognised magma body caused several thousand small earthquakes between 2004 and 2011.. expansion of the molten rock chamber approximately 9km below Matata has pushed up 400 square kilometres of land by 40cm.. something was accumulating at a depth of around 9.5 to 10km beneath the Earth’s surface.. The magma body could have been there for centuries or more.. The area was a ‘rift zone’ where over time the crust had been stretched and thinned – but it was not clear whether the crust was already thin, or the magma made it thin. ‘It is probably a thinner crust than the average you’d find elsewhere.. But what happens is as you stretch the crust and the hot rocks beneath come to a shallower depth, as they become shallower they get less pressure, which actually then enables them to melt and become magma. That magma, because it’s less buoyant than the surrounding rock, it then wants to percolate up through [into the crust]'”, RNZ – radionz.co.nz/news/national/305592/magma-buildup-blamed-for-quakes & Science Advances article, “results suggest that the continued growth of a large magmatic body may represent the birth of a new magma chamber on the margins of a back-arc rift system” – advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/6/e1600288.full
“A huge deposit of magma has been detected just 9km below a small North Island town – and scientists say it may be causing earthquakes. Matata is nestled between Tauranga and Opotiki, and new research using satellite image, GPS data and surveying has revealed the molten secret. The level of the town has been steadily rising over the last few years – up to 10mm per year of uplift, but it is now beginning to slow to about four-five millimetres per year. Scientists are confident there will not be an eruption in the near future, but say they will continue to monitor the magma field”, TV1 – tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/huge-field-molten-magma-found-under-north-island-town
“Rising magma to blame for swarm of quakes”, TV3 – newshub.co.nz/nznews/rising-magma-to-blame-for-swarm-of-quakes-2016060400
“Volcano status and notifications come to the GeoNet app – With the flurry of volcano activity last month, we’re pleased to add some new features to the GeoNet app so you can keep an eye on them, too”, GNS 30May2016 – info.geonet.org.nz/display/appdata/2016/05/30/Volcano+status+and+notifications+come+to+the+GeoNet+app
Update 17/6/2016
Lake Tarawera water warning, 10 Jan 2015 – “People are being warned not to drink water from Lake Tarawera or swim in it after locals noticed the water was discoloured. It was reported to the Bay of Plenty Regional Council yesterday by Hot Water Beach residents. The council says geothermal activity could be to blame for the water’s white, milky appearance. Samples have been taken to test for the presence of algal blooms. The results are not due back until next week.” http://www.newshub.co.nz/nznews/lake-tarawera-water-warning-2015011012
Lake Tarawera tests positive for algae, 15 Jan 2015 – “Lake Tarawera has tested positive for potentially toxic blue-green algae, but a health warning will not be issued. The confirmation comes after samples were taken from the lake last week, as well as Te Rata Bay near Hot Water Beach. The lake is at ‘amber alert’, meaning the situation will continue to be monitored. ‘The blue-green algae identified are potentially toxic but the levels of algae are below health guidelines,’ says Bay of Plenty Regional Council science manager Rob Donald. ‘We recommend that people do not swim in the water if it is discoloured.’ Blue-green algae only recently arrived in New Zealand, but has already taken its place in lakes throughout the North Island. It causes water to appear green and cloudy, and sometimes green specks will be visible.” http://www.newshub.co.nz/nznews/lake-tarawera-tests-positive-for-algae-2015011517
Mt Tarawera vent erupts after 35-year slumber, 17 Jun 2016 – “One of the geothermal vents in Mt Tarawera’s Raupo Pond Crater came alive for the first time in 35 years last month, according to GeoNet. The Mud Rift feature — a 6m-wide, 36m-long, 15m-deep vent formed in 1906 that has been lying dormant since 1981 — was activated sometime between May 17 and 20 this year. A blog on the GeoNet website suggests the eruption was a fleeting event, and involved fluids flooding into the vent and causing ‘stress and browning off’ of surrounding plants. It says the eruption was mainly steam-driven, and involved plenty of water, creating what has been likened to a ‘muddy geyser’.” newshub.co.nz/nznews/mt-tarawera-vent-erupts-after-35-year-slumber-2016061716
natural autonomy N/A 