Coastal Community to Create Community Response Plan

Residents of Haumoana and Te Awanga have formed a working group to create a Community Response Plan for how to “Get Ready, Get Thru” in a civil defence emergency.

Around 60 Haumoana and Te Awanga residents attended a meeting at the Haumoana Pavilion last night to discuss public alert systems for the coastal community.

The plan, and the process around creating it, will be a pilot plan for other communities in Hastings District and wider Hawke’s Bay which want to improve their reaction and resilience to civil defence emergencies.

Heretaunga Ward councillor Rod Heaps chaired the meeting, called by Hastings District Council, which aimed to provide information on local hazards and form a group to create a plan of action on local alert systems.

“Haumoana and Te Awanga is already has a very active volunteer Civil Defence team and the potential hazards to the community have already been identified – so it made sense to start the project in this community,” Cr Heaps says.

Representatives from Hastings District Council and Hawke’s Bay Regional Council’s civil defence teams and the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Science gave presentations.

As a Civil Defence authority Hastings District Council has well established Emergency Service reaction plans in place but the Community Response Plan aims to:

Develop the community’s response and recovery plans
Involve the community in risk reduction and readiness activities
Move the community toward independence, rather than dependence and reliance on third parties

It is expected the Community Response Plan will take an ‘all-hazards’ approach.

The hazards will include flooding, earthquake, tsunami and the other top ten hazards identified for Hawke’s Bay.