Members of the public have voiced concern on social media about the delay in notifications from authorities, following a wild thunder and lightning storm that lashed Auckland overnight on Friday.
However, Auckland Emergency Management (AEM) general manager Adam Maggs defended the agency’s response.
He said the agency began speaking to MetService about midnight on Easter Friday, and a severe thunderstorm watch was issued shortly after.
Fire and Emergency said they received hundreds of calls for help in Auckland overnight, due to the storm.
Between 11.30pm Friday and 4am Saturday there were 223 weather-related calls asking for firefighters’ help, including two water rescues where people were trapped in their cars by floodwaters — one in Wesley and one in Onehunga.
AEM said many of the jobs firefighters were responding to were cars that had to be pulled out of floodwater.
“I think the key thing for us is that we were working with Fire and Emergency New Zealand right from the start of this, when the calls started coming in — and MetService — to understand the nature of where the system was tracking,” AEM’s Maggs said.
“Initially, there wasn’t an indication that (FENZ) were under any pressure or that the impacts were going to be that great. However, we started getting, you know, signals that actually there was some flooding happening.”
At that point, AEM decided to set up its emergency co-ordination centre (ECC), Maggs said.
“We were already liaising and working with FENZ, but by standing up at our ECC it means that we can get our staff together so that we can co-ordinate things, for example, such as the CDC (Civil Defence Centre) and setting that up.
“We feel like we responded effectively based on what we were facing with the pretty rapid-onset event.”
Some social media users began posting dramatic footage online before midnight, however, and Waimauku resident Brya Wallace said the first wave of Friday night’s storm rolled in about 10pm.
Brya Wallace captured video of some impressive lightning in Waimauku, Rodney overnight. (Source: 1News)
“There were a couple of thunderous booms that shook the whole house.
There was one I wish I recorded that sounded almost alien as it reverberated through the air before descending into a satisfying clap that shook the house,” Wallace said.
‘A bit late’
A chain of angry comments followed AEM’s first comment of the night to their Facebook emergency updates page at 12.42am Saturday.
“Warning issued at 00.43[am] for a massive thunderstorm that started almost an hour ago?!?”, one said.
“A bit late, its been hammering down up that way for the last 2-3hrs,” another said, while another posted: “That was one of the worst thunderstorms I’ve ever experienced in my 40+ years living in Auckland.”
Still another complained the warning was an “Ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.”
In Waimauku, the first storm to reach her had lasted for at least an hour, maybe even an hour and a half, Wallace said.
“I was actually playing a video game on my computer and could hear the thunder through my headset,” Wallace said.
“My family and I were watching it for about an hour as it went from about 16km away, by counting the seconds, to overhead and passed overhead.”
Weather events can happen very fast – AEM
The storm conditions had unfolded very quickly, Maggs told Saturday Morning: “These types of events can happen very quickly and without warning.”
“What we noticed last night was we had a range of thunderstorm cells that trained – which means that they followed each other in a line across Auckland, around midnight, for about three hours into the early hours of the morning.
“That was what caused the impact, not only the light show, but also a lot of rain, particularly around Mt Roskill and Sandringham, within Auckland.”
MetService have been contacted for comment.
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