March 18, 2007

On March 18, 2007 after a period of heavy rain, the lahar finally took place. The lahar managers were alerted to the movement at the dam at approximately 10.20 am.

However, it took an hour for the dam to break, giving the management more time to initiate the response. The lahar took two hours to travel from the Crater to the Tangiwai road bridge. The lahar broke through the crater rim at 11.22 am and arrived at the Tangiwai road bridge at 1.22 pm.

Wheatcroft was based in Taumauranui. He said he was meant to have a pager linked to the ERLAWS warning system, however, his pager broke the week before the lahar took place:

When the lahar happened, I didn’t hear about it for an hour after the event. Then I had to jump in my car and drive for an hour down to Ohakune to the EOC (Emergency Operation Centre). At that stage, Dave Wakelin had been handling the media.

Wakelin had been alerted the lahar was taking place at 10.22 and had begun taking calls from journalists at his home in Taupo at 11.00 am. Many reporters already had

Wakelin’s cellphone number after the October 2006 mini-eruption, while others had found his home number in the phone book:

A large number of them I’d already met through the 4th of October [mini eruption event]. It was interesting in that we found that the media turnover over that 11 year period – all the calls we were getting, so many of them were new names – people who’d suddenly expressed an interest in the eruption. There were a lot of new people we hadn’t heard of before.

Wakelin knew the lahar was taking place but was unable to give reporters confirmation the lahar had occurred until he got permission from the area controller located in

Ohakune – an arrangement set down in the Emergency Response Plan. However, media were not going to wait:

It’s not good when you’re in a situation like this and you’re telling people you can’t confirm and that you’re still waiting for information. I knew there was a lahar underway from looking at the instrumentation I had on the screen because

down past them. Or you’ve had a massive computer failure, but that looked unlikely, because the time intervals between the alarms being set off matched the predictions.

For some reporters, Wakelin found a way around the need to confirm or deny:

The media knew damn well there had been a lahar. I had a reporter call in, and she said to me, “I’m driving towards Waiouru, and I know you can’t tell me anything, but should I speed up or slow down”. I said, “speed up”.

For Wheatcroft, the lahar was another example of media often knowing what was happening in emergency situations before he did:

The thing is that the media listen in on the Police emergency [radio] bands the whole time. So if something happens, they know about it straight away. They don’t need to be told. Often the media will ring me before I know of something. For instance, that eruption we had the other day [September 29] when that guy lost his leg. I got rung at home, “Paul, what’s happening with the emergency? What’s happening with the eruption?” And I hadn’t even heard about it. Often I go to the media and say, “So what do you know?” “Can I get a bit of

information?”

Wakelin had also experienced the media’s skill at obtaining information. He told the story of how, after the media visit to the Crater with the Ministers on January 29, 2007, he was driving back to Taupo with Dominion Post reporter, Mike Watson. As they were driving through Turangi, Watson received a call from his boss in Wellington. After Wakelin and Watson had come off the mountain, DOC workers had accidentally triggered the ERLAWS warning, initiating a pager message warning of a lahar. Watson’s boss heard about the alert from amateur radio operators scanning police channels and had rung Watson to find out about the situation. Wakelin saw this as evidence of the need for a prompt media response:

Because of the speed and mobility of the media, you’ve got to keep them in the loop as fast as you can. And that was something on the day that might have made things a bit easier.

He found the media response set down in the Emergency Response Plan to be idealistic:

There was this idea that Ohakune was going to be the control centre. They were going to set up a media centre with phone lines and faxes and other stuff as

wait to be fed information. Of course, that’s not how the media works. The media don’t want to be sitting in a room, waiting for a fax machine to go, particularly if it’s something like this [a lahar]. Because it was literally a two hour event.

At 12.15 pm, Wakelin received permission from Ohakune to confirm the lahar was taking place. He spent the rest of the afternoon answering calls. Wakelin found that some reporters had a better understanding of the lahar than others:

I gathered from some of the reporters – we’re talking largely print media, but particularly radio ones – some of them ring up, and you think, gosh, “what part of New Zealand don’t you live in”. It’s obvious from the questions that they just happened to be the duty reporter and they’ve been told, “oh hey, ring this

number and talk to this guy about the lahar”. But they have no idea what a lahar is. One of the last questions of the day, which made my day, on March 18, was from a reporter saying, “when are you going to rebuild it?”. But then again – let’s face it – in every profession there’s always someone who gets roped-in to deal with it, without really understanding what to do. And it does happen.

However, Wakelin also found that while some journalists may have lacked knowledge, professionalism was high:

During the day of the lahar, I dealt with 100-plus phone calls in the afternoon. And actually I was incredibly impressed with the professionalism and

understanding and the patience of those phoning in. At one stage I had eight calls – one-after-the-other – and they all said, “I realise you’re busy”. I think it took an hour and a half to write the first media release because the phone kept going.

At 1.15 pm Wakelin issued a press release. While it had taken time to get the release out, media did use it. Wakelin said of the radio interviews he participated in on the day, “for many of the interviews, they’d already got the media release. All they wanted you to do is read it back to them.” According to the Emergency Response Plan, Wakelin was to have made his way to Ohakune. However, this did not happen due to the volume of calls Wakelin answered. Wheatcroft eventually arrived in Ohakune and opened a media centre and started taking calls.