Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Mark Mitchell: Emergency Management Minister on Cyclone Vaianu

Transcript

Mark Mitchell: Emergency Management Minister on Cyclone Vaianu · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about the cyclone. Seems to have been and gone.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Eight hundred properties were evacuated across the North Island. Looks
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: like none at this stage were actually flooded. Mark Mitchell,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Emergency Management Minister with us this morning. Minister, Good morning,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Good morning, Ryan. So what do we dodge a bullet?
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I did. We did. Really it was I mean,
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: without a doubt, we've had impacts. It's been a major
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: event for us. So we've had ten local states emergency.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: We've had we've actually had several thousand houses that were
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: evacuated and you know, in about fourteen thousand without power,
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: So we've a it has been a significant event for us.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: But the good news was that everyone was well prepared,
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: well positioned, and so we've been able to sort of
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: keep those impacts to a minimum.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Of those houses that were evacuated, did any of them
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: actually flood did they need to be? I guess it's
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: the question.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Yes, some of them, some of them have flooded, but
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: a lot of them were precautionary evacuations and that was
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: the right thing to do because you know, this this
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: the event could have been much worse for us. We
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: were lucky that it actually started to move out to
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: the east and now it's sort of it's left the
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: North Island altogether. It's sort of moving southeast and thankfully
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: should pass the west of the Cheddam Islands.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: How many houses flooded, I haven't.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: Got an exact number in terms of how many have flooded.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: I know that I'm heading over to a Hope, Fokatani
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: and Potoqui today. There was an inundation at a Hope,
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: so we'll go and check the damage on that. I'll
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: get in a proper update this morning at about six thirty.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: With all those numbers all right, Minister, I went round
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: just in my area in Auckland on Sunday morning and
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: most of the businesses they were closed. It was an
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: orange warning, you know. I guess the risk is that
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: next time there's a warning, the businesses will open because
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: nothing happened this time. So what do we do about
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: that should they have opened.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Well, they can use their own danger scents in terms
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: of what they do. But one thing I would say
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: is that certainly there is no room for complacency at all.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: We deal with this with events. We've been through a
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: tragedy as a country with you know, with an event
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: earlier in the year at at the Mount and also
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Welcome Bay and we lost the farm up around a
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: Pookey as well. They're dangerous without a doubt, so you know,
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: there's no room for complacency. When I became minister there
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: sort of there was a report that came to me
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: from Sagerian Matapari. One of the things that one of
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: the issues that we do face is there's a optimism
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: bias sort of sits inside the system and as key
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: we we've got a sort of a Shelby Right attitude.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: But these weather events are serious, they impact people in
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: they and we can lose people. So, like I said,
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: there's we're always going to make sure that we take
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: every step in every measure to keep people in properly safe.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: All right, Marke, appreciate your time this morning. Mark Mitchell,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Emergency Management Minister.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: For more from early edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live
• 2:50
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• 2:53
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