La autonomía de la realidad

Relationships both within agencies and across different agencies and organisations are critical in responding to an event in a collaborative and co-ordinated way. Having pre-established working relationships with other people and organisations allows responders to better deal with an event as people are familiar with each other and used to working together (Curnin & Owen, 2014; Paton et al., 1998). If relationships are nurtured and maintained then the roles, responsibilities and expectations of each person or agency can be understood prior to the emergency response (Curnin, Owen & Trist, 2014).

Throughout the Kaikoura response it was thought by most participants that pre-established relationships assisted. Those relationships prior to the event helped in knowing what the other people do and their experience prior to this response. Many of the responders had worked together before on the response to the Canterbury earthquakes in 2010 and 2011. The

Interviewee H:

“Those consultants have worked together before makes a massive difference and I knew a lot of them as well and it is just huge. I could get on the phone to X [name removed]and say what are you doing and you can’t beat those relationships.”

It was found that those pre-established relationships improved simple tasks like knowing who to contact, having their contact details to hand, being more confident in that person and their ability to respond. Having pre-existing relationships also allowed for response processes to proceed more quickly. Although those pre-established relationships do help they are not necessarily essential as the New Zealand Coordinated Incident Management System (CIMS) framework is set up to work whether people are known to each other beforehand or not.

Interviewee A:

“The way the emergency management framework is structured it doesn’t really matter

if you have those pre-established relationships but it really does help.”

Whilst there were many pre-established relationships from previous events responding to the landslide dams there were also new relationships. It is important to be able to converse effectively with different stakeholders, it is imperative in establishing good working relationships with people through a response (Curnin & Owen, 2014). CDEM work hard to develop relationships with different agencies and often an event is the best place to develop them as working together builds those connections. To build new relationships it is important to put effort in and work harder to build trust with those people you don’t know.

Interviewee M:

“You always want to be reliant on those relationships that you develop, if it is new then

you’ve just got to work at those harder but people there are for the community good.” “Where I put the effort in because I had never met the chief executive before, I had met

the mayor a couple of times so putting the relationship into the council’s chief

executive was the key thing.”

A challenge in building relationships in an event like the Kaikoura landslide dams was found to be the rotation of staff. This meant having to build relationships with several people filling a single role.

5.9.1 Key Research Findings

The results of this research around relationships in the response to the Kaikoura landslide dam event clearly identifies several key outcomes:

• Overall most interviewees believed that pre-established relationships with other people and agencies helped in the response by having a better understanding of what other people can do and will bring to the response.

• Although those pre-established relationships help they are not essential but not having them can slow down the work flow. New relationships can be built through a response with a little extra effort and be used for the next event.

5.9.2 Additional Interview Quotes

Table 5.8 - Quotes from interviews about the relationships in the response to the landslide dams in Kaikoura.

Sub-theme Interview Quote

Pre-established relationships

help

F

“Probably would have helped just to have the understanding of what they do and know this has happened let’s get on the phone to this person.”

Q

“They understand us better which is useful, and certainly, every after- action report that we ever read says the importance of relationships and to me it reconfirmed it.”

Relationships not

essential Q

“There were people I met for the first time and I was confident they would do what they needed to do but having that relationship just speeds it up I think.”

Build relationships

Q

“We do work at developing relationships with them and thinking about how, or talk about how we are going to do things so yes that worked ok.”

I

“When staff are rotating that is another challenge you are actually needing to get to know several people filling that role not just the one person.”