Communication failures during Cyclone Gabrielle echoed those exposed by Hurricane Katrina

Emergency telecommunications failings at the height of Cyclone Gabrielle bore a striking similarity to those exposed by Hurricane Katrina in the United States 18 years earlier, official documents show.

As in Katrina, during Cyclone Gabrielle, pagers — the wireless telecommunications device invented in the 1960s — were the only form of communication to continuously operate over long distance in Gisborne. (Satphones require a line of sight with the satellite, do not generally work indoors and require charged batteries.)

The issue was highlighted in a series of “situation reports” from the National Coordination Centre (NCC),  Regional Coordination centres (RCC) and local coordination centres during the cyclone response, and which were released to The Gisborne Herald under the Official Information Act.

On February 11, a Niwa update for the upper North Island provided to the NCC stated: “Gabrielle’s forward speed currently appears a bit faster than was forecast over the past few days. This means that the significant impacts (ie, heavy rain and strong winds) will likely arrive a bit sooner than previously forecast.”

A day later, red warnings for heavy rain were in force for Northland, Auckland, Coromandel Peninsula and Gisborne north of Tolaga Bay, and a 12-person Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) team were predeployed to Tairāwhiti.

On February 13, a strategic risk plan put together by NCC included planning assumptions that regions and districts would be self-sufficient for at least 24 hours.

It also expected loss of communications, noting the use of satellite phones would be needed, with “NCC to confirm the number of satphones available in the country”.

A local state of emergency for Gisborne was declared the same day.

On February 14, a national state of emergency was declared, with the NCC situation report (SitRep) noting “major” communication issues in Tairāwhiti.

It noted there was no ability for the public to call 111, adding the paging network was the only form of communication with responding Fire and Emergency NZ (FENZ) appliances in Gisborne.

However, “our issue is our people are no longer carrying pagers due to the popularity of alternate solutions”, the SitRep said.

Pager use was one of a number of recommendations in a 2006 independent report for the United States government after looking into communications failures after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005 — leaving hundreds dead.

The report said emergency staff pager familiarisation was as an “essential step” in pre-positioning equipment, supplies and personnel.

That report found paging during the hurricane was more reliable than voice or cellular systems because paging utilises satellite networks for backbone infrastructure.

“Paging technology is also inherently redundant, which means that messages may still be relayed if a single transmitter or group of transmitters in  a network fails.”

It also pointed out that group pages could be sent to “thousands of pager units” at the same time in an emergency.

Responding to The Herald yesterday, FENZ district manager Peter Clark said In Tairāwhiti, all fire and emergency members — career and volunteer — were issued with pagers on their introduction into brigades.

“While pager turnouts have been the normal for Gisborne personnel for many years, some have opted for phone texting or the Alert Messaging  System (AMS) turnout from our 111 fire communication centre dispatchers.

“It has been a personal choice for people to use AMS or wear a pager. All on-call executive commanders wear pagers and many of our people carry pagers.

“During Cyclone Gabrielle, our communication expert, who was part of the USAR team, tested the pager network once it was apparent all other communications had been lost and found the pager network to be still working.

“Just after communications were cut due to Cyclone Gabrielle, our Command Unit made first contact by satellite phone with our Central 111 Fire Communications

Centre (Central ComCen) who take 111 calls and dispatch trucks.

“Central ComCen is part of our national ComCen. Later that morning we established further robust communications via the command vehicle satellite VoIP phone.”

Mr Clarke confirmed all brigades were given pre-warning of the impending weather event.

“Contact was made days prior to Gabrielle’s impact on Tairāwhiti when we were organising Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) and Response teams from out of district to assist and pre-position resources across the district.”