Papamoa resident Jess Amos was on a 21^st birthday holiday in Australia with her partner Jacob. It was 11.15pm, she was fast asleep, and Jacob had seen on the news there had been an earthquake with parts of the North Island being evacuated.

He checked Jess's phone and saw there was a text message saying people in the Bay of Plenty area needed to move inland or to higher ground immediately.

Jess rang her mum and dad in Papamoa, but had no answer. She texted them, but again, no answer. She then rang her brother, who was asleep in the room next door to his parents; and he finally answered and woke his mum Sue at 2.15am.

Sue had received the text notification, but her phone was on mute.

'You don't want beeping going on in the middle of the night,” says Sue. 'I checked my phone and it said to leave immediately, so we got up, got the two dogs and went immediately.

'You feel guilty for not waking neighbours. I did phone my friend, and also someone had contacted them from another country.”

She's since seen on Facebook where people suggested tooting horns.

'By the time we got towards the hills there were a lot more cars coming past. And then we got the message that it was just marine [threat]. We didn't get the text message to go home until 4.30am.”

'If it hadn't been for Jessica being overseas we wouldn't have woken. A lot of our friends were woken by people in England. South Africa – we had a phone call from there to make sure we were all okay.”

Sue and her family went towards Summerhill, but when the Civil Defence message was downgraded to a marine threat, they went instead to park outside the kennels in Welcome Bay and watched the stream of cars go by.

'I just kind of feel that if you get a message that says you need to go inland or to higher ground immediately, that's when you should have your sirens,” says Jess.

'A text isn't good enough. At that point if you are told you need to leave and go, then why wouldn't you sound the alarms to let everyone know that? Not just the few people that have phones.”

Jacob agrees.

'I was on social media at the time,” he says. 'And a lot of people were sitting around online waiting. 'Should they go or not. There were hundreds of people that didn't know where to go.”

They now have two kits ready to go, one by the door and one in the car, with essential items in them.