Natural Disaster Resilience

We, among other councils, received the following query from Stuff’s Tom Hunt:

I am working on a series of stories about Wellington's resilience from natural disasters. This is sparked by Cyclone Gabrielle but will cover everything from tsunami to flood to quakes. I was hoping I could get a short statement from each council about how resilient you think your patch is, how much work there is to do, and what can be reasonably afforded.

We sent the following response, attributable to David Hopman:

For Masterton, roading resilience is a key consideration in the event of an emergency event, as it is for Wairarapa as a whole.

The reality is that when the Remutaka Hill is closed, roading access will be via the north of Wairarapa - for state highways, Waka Kotahi has the responsibility. In terms of roading, the Wairarapa Engineering Lifelines Association (WELA) is a regional Lifeline Utility group, one of a national network of such groups which have an objective of reducing infrastructure (including roading) outage risks and minimising restoration time when outages occur.

The recent weather events showed not only how vulnerable some our rural roads are, particularly after a very wet 12 months, but also the effective process the Council has with its contractors, primarily Higgins, to get key rural roads re-opened as quickly as possible after events.

Longer term pressures, such as climate change and sea level rise, are being addressed through the likes of the Mataikona Road project, which is developing solutions for this road, which is subject to coastal erosion, slips and drop-outs.

In terms of air links, currently work to make improvements to Hood Aerodrome, including widening the runway, will enhance its capacity as an asset in an emergency response.