State of Emergency - what it all means

A State of Emergency (SOE) is declared when there is an event that might cause loss of life or property, which cannot be dealt with by the normal emergency services, or when emergency services are at risk of being overwhelmed. SOEs give authorities access to a range of options to manage the event, such as provide rescue, regulate traffic, enter premises to rescue people or save lives, conserve essential supplies and others.

It provides emergency response staff with legislative power to tap into additional resources, assets and funding to do certain things such as close off areas, direct people to do certain acts and even, if necessary, requisition contractors to stop private work and assist with works to ensure public safety.

Below is an example of what level a State of Emergency is declared at and why.

We have based the below content on the series of weather events in the early months of 2023 culminating in Cyclone Gabrielle that caused significant devastation across the north Island. It is for illustrative purposes.

LOCAL

What happened? Due to a flooding event on the Coromandel Peninsula, Thames-Coromandel District Council declared a State of Emergency (SOE).

This enabled the coordination of resources under local Civil Defence.

REGIONAL

What happened? Further extreme weather impacts initiated an SOE by Waikato and Hauraki District Councils. Now that three districts in the Waikato Region were in a state of emergency, Waikato Regional Civil Defence declared.

The Waikato region did this so that a region wide response across the 12 Waikato councils could be activated. This enabled the region to work on a coordinated response using resources from councils unaffected by the event.

Regardless of the effect of an event in the South Waikato District, Council staff do a lot of pre-event preparation on our infrastructure and post-event some of our staff are deployed to help other councils that have been worse hit.

NATIONAL

What happened? Following a third and most severe weather event (Gabrielle) and with multiple regions in an SOE, the Government declared a National SOE to coordinate at a central level. The National SOE affected Northland, Auckland, Waikato, Tairāwhiti, Bay of Plenty, Waikato and Hawke’s Bay.

The national declaration allowed the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) to coordinate resources and assets across the country. Basically, with more and more councils/regions asking for help and declaring SOEs, it was enough to trigger a national declaration.

This is only the third ever national declaration. And the most recent since the 2011 Christchurch earthquake.