The following opinion piece by Auckland Council chief executive Phil Wilson was originally published in The New Zealand Herald on 21 April 2025.
Yesterday’s Herald On Sunday cover proclaimed that “Confusion reigns” and accused Auckland authorities of not acting fast enough over this Easter weekend’s floods. In my view, this is incorrect and undermines people’s trust in our response.
At the heart of this week’s weather impacts are households that have been through this before. Some still have work under way on their properties from the 2023 storms.
Emergency response agencies, including our own, warned of the impacts ex-tropical Cyclone Tam throughout the week. The Herald‘s own reporting carried all of these updates in news stories, on its channels and in its live blogs. Those news outlets that had staff working through the night were in touch with our teams and publishing stories on multiple platforms through the early hours of Saturday morning too.
The council’s stormwater crews were out checking hotspots in advance of the event. Our emergency co-ordination centre has been fully operational since earlier in the week and, as always, we had people on duty through the night.
As many Aucklanders have come out and said on posts and discussion forums across the weekend, there was a high degree of awareness of an extremely volatile weather system affecting many parts of the country as a result of cyclone activity in the tropics.
On Friday evening, there was no thunderstorm watch in place. This was issued by MetService just after midnight – after the storm had started. There was no certainty around which areas might be affected, when or what the impacts might be. Thunderstorms are unpredictable, fast-moving and difficult to forecast.
An Emergency Mobile Alert can be considered when there is an extraordinary or severe threat to life or property. This is a nationally observed protocol which requires a high degree of certainty and when extreme urgency is needed. Watches are issued often, EMAs are typically reserved for warnings – like on Saturday, when we had two warnings in quick succession.
I am not diminishing the impact on those households whose properties flooded, were damaged by rainfall, stormwater or wind. Many were already prepared; we had been sharing that message during the week. Many phoned for help and Fire and Emergency New Zealand responded. Of the 175 call-outs that Fire and Emergency received, a smaller percentage were actual requests for assistance. The rest were alarms triggered by lightning or referrals to other agencies.
We stood up a civil defence centre and provided emergency accommodation for eight displaced families. Our building inspection teams have carried out 16 inspections on properties that reported flooding. They will visit a further 50-plus properties that have reported lesser impacts this week. So far, none of those properties would meet the threshold of a yellow or red placard under emergency declaration conditions.
I don’t think there are many Aucklanders for whom a downpour doesn’t trigger feelings of concern or urgency. But there are two things we collectively need to do in Tāmaki Makaurau when it comes to weather. We need to understand the difference between a long-lead weather event like a cyclone, which allows us time to prepare, adjust our plans and brace for impact; and accept that on a narrow isthmus subject to weather from the tropics, we will bear the consequences of fast-moving thunderstorm cells. When 100mm of rain falls in an hour in an urban area, there will always be issues. Community and individual preparedness for emergencies is key.
The first responders, particularly Fire and Emergency firefighters and response teams, immediately step up. Auckland Emergency Management provides co-ordination and welfare assistance. And Auckland Council’s staff and contractors, and those that deliver our regulatory responsibilities, span response and clean-up.
A lot has changed since the severe weather events of 2023. Mayor Wayne Brown and our councillors have made some extremely bold decisions, and some trade-offs, to invest more than $1 billion into storm recovery and resilience and there is more to come over the next few years. This comes at a cost to Aucklanders and it needs to be done properly. We are working as fast as we can to deliver this ambitious, multi-year programme.
The complex purchase and repurposing of flood-affected land is well under way. Delivery of flood resilience projects under our Making Space for Water programme is already breaking ground, starting with the worst-affected and most vulnerable areas.
I’ve had feedback from our partner agencies saying that this week’s response was calm, well-organised and highly professional. I’m proud of that, and proud of the progress made since 2023 to get things to this point.
In a crisis, there will always be people affected who feel the response should be faster or better and who voice that to media. I sympathise, these moments of crisis often start messily and are personally emotional and really challenging. It’s also not hard to find politicians who want to publicly “demand answers”. Two years ago, that was justified. But not this time: we will always look at ongoing improvement but actually, the team did extremely well.
