'Public safety is not negotiable” was the comment made by the last Mayor of Waitakere City after the successful test of their Tsunami warning sirens in 2008. With one exception the sirens were heard loud and clear in the areas they were designed to cover.
Although the risk is small, other councils including Wellington and Christchurch City are installing sirens to alert their public should the worst happen.
Tauranga City Council; however, after a lacklustre and fairly average debate has decided not to include sirens as part of a suite of alert mechanisms. A fit for purpose, professionally designed siren system as part of a wider package of alerting methods and devices is common sense.
Council followed advice based on the spreadsheet based decision support tool used by civil defence to rank alert systems.
A good tool, but also theoretical and based on a complex set of calculations and assumptions.
We elect councillors to look past numbers and models to the reality of the people who they represent.
The home based plug in tsunami warning device can't be heard at the beach (neither can an email warning) and a mass text message system could potentially crash the cell network. Councillors, listen to how the public are telling you they want to be alerted!
Steve Morris, Papamoa Beach.