00:09
So from looking at a case study of disaster response in
00:12
Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, let's now turn for
00:15
the last topic in Module 1 to look at some community-based
00:19
risk reduction and resilience building in
00:22
Wellington, New Zealand.
00:25
Dan Neely, the Community Resilience Manager for the
00:27
Wellington Regional Emergency Management Office is going to
00:30
describe their project and what they've done and learning
00:34
from events in the past to better prepare their community
00:37
for risks in the future.
00:39
The driver for this project came from the Indian Ocean
00:42
tsunami in 2004, when New Zealand government and
00:45
communities identified a need to be better prepared for and
00:48
reduce risk from tsunamis.
00:50
This Wellington project is one of the leading projects for
00:54
building resilience and building risk reduction in New
00:58
Zealand communities.
01:00
So one of the risks that we have-- of course, being
01:02
Wellington, we're known as the Shaky City--
01:04
we have a myriad of fault lines that run across and
01:08
right through our city.
01:10
This concept is based on the worst case scenario.
01:13
So the maximum run-up height of a rupture on the subduction
01:18
zone which is out here to the left.
01:21
It's basically where the Pacific plate and the
01:23
Australasian plate come together.
01:25
That could generate a tsunami that could go up to
01:28
30 metres in height.
01:29
Again, this is based on modelling, not an elevation
01:32
line across the city.
01:33
So different areas are going to have these lines in
01:35
different spaces.
01:36
And that's again why we like this concept.
01:38
It's really quite easy to demonstrate where those
01:42
maximum run-up height can be.
01:43
It's a great visual, because you're especially at this
01:46
level, it's almost impossible to believe that the tsunami
01:51
could come up this high.
01:53
Ironically, we put these lines in place one month before the
01:56
Japanese tsunami.
01:57
So of course we have critics that were saying this is
01:59
impossible.
02:00
There's no way water would come up here.
02:01
Some of those same critics within days after the Japanese
02:04
tsunami were actually coming to us saying are you sure you
02:06
have those lines high enough.
02:08
So it is a great visual.
02:09
It really does help tell that story.
02:12
One of our best known fault lines in the city is the
02:14
Wellington fault.
02:15
That would not cause a tsunami up to this height.
02:17
So this is based on the subduction zone of the two
02:21
plate boundary fault line.
02:23
Worst case scenario, absolute worst case scenario, it is
02:26
also not designed for a distant-source tsunami.
02:29
So that's always one of the challenges, getting that
02:32
across to the public is--
02:34
the tsunami, that is--
02:36
we'd have warnings for that.
02:37
We'd have potentially sirens, other types of mechanisms to
02:40
alert the public.
02:41
The one that, of course, keeps us a little bit more awake at
02:44
night is the big rupture on the fault line
02:46
here in our own backyard.
02:48
And with that in mind, what we try to really promote is the
02:51
idea that if it is a long or strong earthquake, get
02:55
everyone in your household and start moving to get
02:57
above this blue line.
03:00
I think this is a powerful tool because it also--
03:03
when people say ah, that modelling, it's bogus.
03:07
How can they predict something like that?
03:09
What do they want me to do, just run up to the street on
03:12
ABC St., get ahead of that stupid blue line.
03:15
And even when I hear people say that, as cynics, I'm
03:20
always really pleased to hear because they're still doing
03:22
what we want them to do.
03:23
They're still describing the action that I want them to do
03:25
in the community, which is yeah, after a big earthquake,
03:28
we want you to run to that line on ABC
03:31
St. which you know.
03:32
So I think it's one of the powerful
03:34
components of this tool.
03:38
So we've heard from Dan Neely telling us about an excellent
03:42
bottom-up approach to disaster risk reduction within a
03:45
community that is attempting to better understand the risks
03:48
that it faces.
03:50
The project delivers a set of tools and resources to enable
03:53
that community to better understand the risk that it
03:55
faces and what it needs to do when an event occurs.
04:00
It's also enabled the people in the community who are
04:03
living there, who might be deciding to live there, where
04:06
the areas of safety are.
04:08
And just better understanding the risks that they face,
04:11
enables informed decisions.
04:12
That doesn't necessarily mean they won't live there, but it
04:15
means they're able to do so in a safer way.
04:17
And as Dan said, property values have gone
04:19
up after this project.
04:21
So the strategy is about building capacity in the
04:23
communities.
04:24
It's about improving connectedness between parts of
04:26
the community.
04:27
So they can now talk about the risks that they face in a much
04:30
more open and informed way than they could do previously.
04:32
It's about fostering cooperation, and through the
04:35
project, those sorts of things occur.
04:38
The Wellington tsunami project is an excellent example of
04:41
collaborative holistic emergency management that
04:44
enables those involved to understand the risks that they
04:46
face, work towards reducing that risk over time, being
04:51
ready for it, and responding effectively.
04:54
It's also enabling them to better inform what they will
04:57
need to do in recovery.
04:59
This is an example of what we've been covering in Module
05:01
1 of this course--
05:03
risk-based emergency management, enabling better
05:07
risk reduction, enabling community and organisational
05:11
readiness, collaborative approaches to response, and
05:15
more effective recovery.
05:17
In Module 2, we'll be picking up on a lot of the concepts we
05:20
dealt with in Module 1, but looking in more detail about
05:23
reduction and resilience in an international context.