A LGORITMO DE SELECCIÓN DE FASE BASADO EN EL ÁNGULO β

In the days after the lahar took place it was agreed by the Ministers and – in general – by media that the lahar had been well-managed. Wakelin credited the repeated practices response plan for guaranteeing a smooth response on the day:

I think what worked really well was the Emergency Response Plan. I think it went well because the lahar was a long time coming and that meant we’d had six exercises over six years. Often in those you’d throw in fishhooks with things happening, or the size of it being bigger, or the bund being damaged – those sorts of things. And that means everyone’s sitting around, the clock’s ticking, you can check everyone’s doing what they’re meant to be doing. I think, because we had done that, on the day, pretty well everybody slipped into their roles quite comfortably. I think the success of that also showed up 25th September when, [there was a] different scenario, but to a large extent the things that swung into action were based on the Lahar Response Plan.

Wheatcroft also thought it went well, although he would have liked to have been in Ohakune sooner:

In terms of the big picture, everything worked well. No one got killed. There was very little damage. So everyone was pretty happy. But picking it apart, what didn’t work well was that I wasn’t in Ohakune when it happened. The first text message should have gone out a lot sooner than it did.

I wasn’t prepared for the huge positivity after the lahar. I was prepared for negativity - I knew if we got it wrong, we’d be dumped on. There was a bit of a bandwagon effect.

Christophers summed up the actions of the media on the day as “understanding”:

In this case the press were very sympathetic. Whereas, if it had been a Cave Creek or something else – something where they felt they had a dirt story – they would have been far less friendly.

In the Radio New Zealand National interview, Al Morrison was relieved the lahar had finally taken place:

In this game you have to have a thick skin and a good sense of humour. Frankly, it was an enormous relief to see that thing finally go. We didn’t have any doubt what-so-ever that the preparation had been done. It was a huge cooperative exercise with a whole lot of government agencies, with local government and with iwi. And it worked as it was forecast and planned.

Herb Christophers summed-up the feeling at DOC after the lahar took place:

It was a very good feeling after that because nobody had been hurt, [the lahar] had behaved well within predictions. There was a lot of back slapping all round because the scientists got their predictions well within the parameters that were safe. The public acceptance was good, the media behaved themselves well – it was a bloody good event to be involved with. And it was one of those days when we didn’t get a kick in the cobblers.

Harry Broad saw how the situation would have been different if major infrastructure damage had occurred or someone killed:

The overall thing is if it had gone wrong, the media would have been baying for blood. Because it went right, we got a whole raft of good, positive stories, just saying this has been managed as a national event and the flow’s gone where it should.

Broad believed that science played a large role in the success of the lahar’s management:

We’ve got the memorial to the Tangiwai disaster. What we don’t have is a memorial to say, ‘actually with an ounce of good luck and a ton of good science, we got it right this time’ – so why don’t we commemorate that as well?” …A

discrete distance away from the Tangiwai one. But it’s just a reflection of that it was well-managed, the science was right, and we should actually say, “it wasn’t bad, guys”.

Paul Green said the lahar’s management is now a model for other risk scenarios:

I think it is probably the most well-planned hazard mitigation that I’ve heard about, read about, observed. Very strong science. Very strong engineering. Analysis of what would happen. And it turned out to be exactly true, you know. The path of the lahar, the size of it, the speed that it would move at, its impacts were all pre-determined extremely accurately. And the warning system worked to perfection. I think it’s a model for how something can be planned for.

6.6 Conclusion

This chapter has explored material gained during interviews with nineteen people involved with various aspects of the lahar’s management. The nineteen participants in this study came from nine organisations: Department of Conservation (6), Ruapehu District Council (4), Opus (2), Police (2), Genesis Energy (1), GNS (1), Horizons Regional Council (1), Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management (1) and Ontrack (1). Twelve interviews were conducted face-to-face and the remaining seven were conducted over the phone.

The first two sections of this chapter looked at the lahar from its discovery in 1995 to the development of options to manage it from 1997 to 1999 as well as the consultation process during this time. This section also covered the decisions made by Conservation Minister, Sandra Lee, in 2000. The third section looked at the ensuing debate from 2001-2004 between the Government, local and regional councils and Opposition MP, Nick Smith, over the decision not to intervene at the Crater Rim. It also looked at the how the conflict during this period was resolved, including the involvement of Civil Defence and how the assessments of risk changed how the various agencies worked together. The fourth section of this chapter looked at how DOC’s Strategic Issues group created a communication strategy in the months leading up to the lahar. Afterwards, the media response on March 18, 2007 – the day the lahar took place - was covered. In the final part of the fourth section, individuals involved in the ‘lahar issue’ reflect on how the management went.

The following chapter – Chapter 7 - draws upon the material presented in this chapter along with further information from the interviews to discuss the results of the content analysis. Further, the issues management processes talked about in this chapter are compared with a summary issues management process model. This chapter also includes discussion of the tactics used to communicate with the many lahar

Chapter 7: