Updated: Auckland Floods: Curated resources
Updated: Auckland Floods: Curated resources
Given the pathetic poor initial official communications and in my opinion some not-entirely brilliant media coverage of the Auckland floods, I thought I might try to put a few resources together to see if they are at all helpful to have in one place.
New thoughts or items, as of Sunday evening (NZ time):
It seems clear that the mayoralty office has got the message even if the mayor himself hasn’t but I will be charitable and hope he has. The mayoral account, detailed below, is communicating more and acknowledging the work some councillors have done —such as Richard Hill — to communicate with their constituents.
The news conference between Mayor Wayne Brown and Prime Minister Chris Hipkins was telling for all involved. The way Brown passed comments to his “experts” only exposed his own weakness in communications. They rightly focused on saving lives and be out and in the thick of it but the real fault has been communications and that is something the mayoralty was ideally placed to fix.
This item from the comedian Tom Sainsbury is weird and rather good about some of these issues. My question, to be clear, is not the state of emergency, it is the entire approach to communications and information both directly and through media.
There’s also been some effective and thoughtful news and commentary from media today though I would like to discuss the question of anticipation, planning, and thinking about how best news organisations can serve people in cases like this. I do some of that analysis in the work I do and it interests me that we fail or are late.
Stuff in Auckland did some good work on what we call a “tick tock” of the hours up to the crisis and what might or might not have been done differently. It seems very fair.
Countdown to Chaos: As Aucklanders were desperately seeking safety, officials were silent. It makes the point that provoked me to even do this part of my Substack blog which is to talk about the absence of communication. In difficult situations, the absence of communication makes it all much worse, as opposed to the kind of authentic communication we get from good leaders or authorities.
I suspect a huge amount of this was due to it being an Auckland Anniversary Holiday weekend and few communications staff on hand but the failure of many organisations to have backup or perhaps employees need to understand that when a genuine crisis hits they may need to stay at their posts whether or not they are paid for it. Duty.
Some pillock questioned whether reporters had got wet. Yes, I am sure they did, as photographers, television and radio reporters, and many others did. Someone also accused me of bias. I don’t have an editorial post in a media organisation so I don’t think that works, but I do know a bit about communications in disasters.
I also accept that some of the media reaction and behaviour in front of Wayne Brown is because of his high-handed attitude towards the media and his reluctance to be present or held to account. I took an editor at Tova’s radio show to task many months ago because I felt it was self-serving to say the mayor had to or should appear. However, Brown has laid that foundation of behaving like a prick with media people and hasn’t done the sensible thing if he is going to do that and communicate directly.
Believe it or not, most journalists really do just want to represent their readers or viewers and encourage politicians to be accountable. There might be too much “gotcha” in NZ media — the yelled questions at the news conference did no one any favours yesterday, they just sounded shrill and provocative.
It is also true that media organisations in a crisis need to report on it, show how bad it is, find the positive stories that make us less worried, and explain the origins of it — which will be about the effective explanation of climate change and La Nina and so on.
Good reads which I found useful today included:
The Auckland floods are a sign of things to come – the city needs stormwater systems fit for climate change, by climate scientist James Renwick in The Conversation.
The New Zealand Herald live blog is pretty good and its associated stories of roads and weather are also genuinely helpful in thinking about what’s coming.
Analysis: Wayne Brown appears to have missed what a mayor's job is in a crisis, by Todd Niall at Stuff is really thoughtful and reflects his years of commitment to reporting Auckland. He’s a genuinely good person.
Thomas Coughlan: Wayne Brown vs. everyone a test of Chris Hipkins’ power, is pretty funny though I often find Thomas excessively flowery, there are some nice lines.
Official sites and sources:
- Civil Defence Auckland
Twitter: @AucklandCDEM
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aklcdem
Website: https://www.aucklandemergencymanagement.org.nz/major-incident/flooding-2023
My rating: 5/10 . Upping to 6/10 after the alert tonight which was logical and helpfulAn almost comical (Friday) overnight gap of around 11 hours in information on Twitter or other social media. The communication approach is poor so far.
- Auckland Transport
Twitter: @AklTransport and its lame supposed alerts feed: @AT_TravelAlerts
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/288677432812183
Website: https://at.govt.nz/
My rating: 2/10
Hard to imagine a sleeper response overnight to a major disaster which was clear from extraordinary footage inside buses being flooded as they drove along.
- Auckland City Council
Twitter: @AklCouncil
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aklcouncil
Website: https://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/
My rating 1/10
It does have an “Our Auckland” site which is trying to stay up to date. Hard to believe that the response here was so poor, not to mention the ludicrous behaviour of the mayor who sort of tweets but not really here.
- Auckland Mayor
Twitter: @MayorAuckland
My rating: 2/10 as of Sunday
Starting to do what was necessary on Friday which was to explain and communicate. It is getting better and it seems to me it is the right place to do it. A human communicating to humans what he and his office can see at the moment. Here’s what I wrote earlier: The mayor and the city are not communicating directly and he disdains the media and when he does turn up spouts nonsense like this depressing exchange with Kim Hill on RNZ. Their lame social media outreach shows they need to engage with real media.
- Waka Kotahi - the New Zealand Transport Agency
Twitter: @WakaKotahiAkNth
Website: https://www.nzta.govt.nz/
My rating 1/10 3/10 - message has gotten through and their vital comms are clearer
They promise real-time updates and then stopped updates literally as roads started closing on Friday night.
- Met Service
Twitter: @MetService
Website: https://www.metservice.com/
My rating 6/10
Anyone who tracked this through the day would have been better prepared.
Next to where I live the entire bank has fallen into the sea, crushing a boat house and making the remaining bank vulnerable. (Photograph: Peter Bale)
Unofficial and media sources:
RNZ live blog is reasonably comprehensive.
NZ Herald live blog is heavy on images and deaths and destruction but maybe light on news-you-can use to look after yourself and your neighbours.
Stuff live blog appears to be trying to convey the all-important advice with more bad weather to come over the next several days, and not just in Auckland. Stuff audience members and the great photographers there did excellent work.
1News blog headline leads on Elton John news for a while.
TikTok has an astounding array of videos from around the city and the rest of New Zealand, mostly under the hashtag #aucklandflood. Duncan Greive of The Spinoff captured how extraordinary Tik Tok - almost all real humans — had been. (It reminds me of the groundbreaking moment when social media was superb on the London terror attacks of July 2005 in the sense of it being a wake up call for media.)
Richard Hills is a North Shore city councillor who has been seemingly working his butt off all night to get sensible information out in rather dramatic contrast to the Mayor and whose Twitter account has been accurate and valuable: @RichardHills_
The Mayoral and Prime Ministerial news conference was a shitshow in which the mayor disgraced himself further by appearing ill-prepared, incompetent, and effectively throwing experts and officials under the bus.
It is true that he is getting it in the next from the news media partly because he has refused to engage with them at all since being elected. The trouble is he hasn’t engaged directly with citizens either so his communications are all messed up.
I will do this again tomorrow and let me know what you think. My various weather apps suggest Tuesday may be horrid but this is Auckland we are used to rapid change in weather and the impact of La Nina and so on. This piece from The NZ Herald is moderately useful on what is happening with the weather.
I’ll see if there’s any response to this and maybe add to it later.