John Price: Civil Defence Director defends use of emergency alert system

The cautionary handling of the effects of Russia's earthquake, which triggered tsunami phone alerts and some coastal evacuation, has been further explained.

The 8.8 magnitude quake shunted tsunami waves across the Pacific - the largest to hit our shores, landing on the Chatham Islands at 51 centimetres. 

Unpredictable currents are expected to continue until tomorrow. 

Civil Defence Director John Price says precautions are important - and he's defending the use of emergency alerts.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, good afternoon to you. Welcome to the program. First
to the emergency alert that galvanized the country and a
lot of it made us angry. Civil Defense says there's
still a tsunami threat this afternoon, and there is now
rebounding tsunami activity happening from South America. It comes as
questions have been raised whether the warning system went just
a little bit overboard over the course of the night.

(00:20):
Has many people reported being inundated with emergency alerts, including
the middle of the night. Now I'm joined by the
Director of Civil Defense. His name is John Price. John Price,
Hello to.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
You, oh pure Andrew, thank you very much for the
opportunity to speak to you and your listeners.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Very good. First things first, we still have a risk. Now,
what's these rebounding tsunamis?

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Look really good question, Andrew, Thank you. Look, let's I
probably need to take a little step back and just
remind everyone, especially the listeners, that's what happened yesterday with
an eight point eight magnitude earthquake in Russia was probably
one of the largest earthquakes record ordered in the history
of the world. So what that will do, the size

(01:05):
of that sort of earthquake will generate a substantive tsunami. Way,
when I say waye, what that really is is a
body of water. It's not like a way that you
and I would see down at the It's a surge.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
Yes, John, We've watched movies of the boxing day tsunamis.
We know what it surged. We know what a tsunami
looks like, and we know that. We know that that happened.
And then of course it's struck through the South China Sea.
We saw pictures of it on last night's news, but
it never made it to New Zealand. So why should
we be concerned about rebounding tsunamis when the original tsunami

(01:39):
didn't even make it in the first place.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Well that's not correct. That actually has made its way
to New Zealand, Andrew, and we've seen this. It's struck
at various different parts of New Zealand, all the way
through from up North, all the way down south and
Vans to Chatham Islands. Where it's been we've had senses
out of picked it up. And so the tsunami or

(02:02):
the body of water is still with us at the moment,
and hence the rest because until that settles itself down,
we've still got strong and unusual currents. Can we know
Andrew that in these sort of waters, if you enter
these waters there's a ninety percent change to.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
Potentially luckily though of course it's winter and it's cold.
I'm not going for a swim. But here's the thing.
The Minister came on today with Kerrie Woodham and said, look,
we do these alerts so that you can make an
informed decision. My problem is that I don't think the
decision got any more informed. From the start of the
earthquake until the second alert which we got in the
morning twelve hours got nothing, and I worried that the

(02:42):
monitoring system that we have through all the oceans was
not feeding us with updated statistics.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Look, no, that's completely wrong. Though. We've got a lot
of strong science body from GNS and also international research
and science that has backed up the fact that we
have of a body of water that has had and
we've also experienced in it as well. There are parts
of the Bay of Plenty that have had to evacuate

(03:08):
as a result of it. So we're definitely.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Really said that's who's evacuated.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
They were as parts of by Plenty where the precautionary
was taken just to keep them.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
So the water came up, the water came up past
the beach, and up they came, and people had to
be evacuated, not up.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Not up over the beach, but into areas because you've
got to remember, like the likes of estuaries and such
might become areas of concern. So and we know this
marinas and places like that where the water can surge up.
What we've got to do is take a precautionary approach,
not a complacency approach.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
So now, why does some people get one alert? Some
people got three alerts, some people got five. I've got
some people who are claiming they got seven. Was this
was this a localized alert or is there a glitch
in our emergency system?

Speaker 2 (04:00):
We need to just explain what we do there is
we identify the potential hazard and threat and it was
to the whole coast of New Zealand and the Chatham Islands.
So what we do then is we basically create a
coastal polygon around the coast of New Zealand. And what

(04:22):
happens is the message is sent to any fund that
currently is within that polygon, which is near the coast.
So if you are inland, no, you're not going to
get an emergency mobile alert because there's no threat or
this to that area. But if you then move from
the inland area during the time the emergency mobile alert

(04:45):
is alive, it will set itself off.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
Well, John, John, very good, Thank you keep watching, keep
us informed. Thank you very much for your time tonight, Andrew.
And that is John Price, who is our civil defense head,
and I'm sure we all a pre siated him explaining
what an earthquake in the tsunami is to the citizens
of New Zealand. We all needed that, didn't we.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
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