News and Events

This edition of e-Bulletin features a farewell from Director CDEM John Hamilton, who retires on 31 October 2014. Also featured are stories and photos from CDEM Groups involved in Get Ready Week 2014; long service awards for Wellington Region Emergency Management Office staff; planning underway for New Zealand Shakeout 2015, and much more!

The Response Management Director’s Guideline for CDEM Group and Local Controllers [DGL06/08] was updated to V1.1 in October 2014 to recognise the New Zealand Coordinated Incident Management System (CIMS) 2nd edition that was published earlier in 2014 (replacing the first version of CIMS that was referenced in V1). The updated version also reflects Directors Guidelines that had been updated or issued since V1 was published. The general doctrine in the Guideline remains unchanged. The updated V1.1 will not be distributed in hard copy format; it can however be printed in A5 format to replace the content of the original hard copy folder.

The Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management advises that while changes to Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre messages come into effect from today (Wednesday 1 October), the Ministry has been, and remains, the authoritative voice for tsunami advice in New Zealand.

Impact is published quarterly by the Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management on topics of interest to the civil defence emergency management sector. The aim is to share information and lessons, and to celebrate successes. This edition features articles on Ministerial long service award recipients; Enhancing resilience of lifelines systems; a tribute from the Minister to retiring Director John Hamilton; Auckland students practice for the 'big one'; and more.

This edition reinforces the theme of building community resilience, the theme that underpins all our work in civil defence emergency management. It is very pleasing to see just how many different projects are underway that contribute to resilience. Outlining some of these projects in bulletins such as this is intended to encourage other Groups to think about these approaches and consider something similar for their region.

The National Emergency Management Agency has published a technical standard for tsunami warning sirens. It is for use by local authorities who choose to have sirens as part of their public alerting system. We have also posted a sound file of the electronic siren sound and the research documents The use of sirens for tsunami warning in New Zealand and An evaluation of the Signals Used for Tsunami Warnings in New Zealand.

The Director's Guideline for Lifeline Utilities and Civil Defence Emergency Management Groups [DGL 16/14] is now available.

From 1 July 2014, New Zealand is changing its definitions of the Volcanic Alert Level system used by GNS Science and GeoNet, and outlined in section 19, National CDEM warnings of the Guide to the National Civil Defence Emergency Management Plan.