Keeping Up with Culverden is a new series looking behind the scenes at the setting up of aCivil Defence Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) in Hurunui District. It follows their progress from starting up to becoming independently operational. Last month, we followed the team through initial set up and role allocation.

Geographic Information System (GIS) maps cover the meeting table at the Culverden Fire Station like a tablecloth.

Hurunui District Council Emergency Management Officer Allan Grigg has brought the maps from Council so that the newly formed Culverden Civil Defence Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) can start breaking down the area they oversee into smaller zones.

This is the second meeting of the team, and the enthusiasm is infectious as the team breaks up into four subgroups. Each group has a map and a black vivid marker. Thick black boundary lines are soon springing up across the maps as the groups divide the Amuri Plain into a patchwork of smaller, interlocking areas that follow the terrain’s natural boundaries.

Putting their heads together, the groups compile lists of well-known community members living in each of the demarcated areas who could be shoulder tapped to help during a disaster event by reporting conditions on the ground to the CERT team.

Grigg calls it a “cascade of information” that will flow directly from these smaller areas, which might range from only one farm or land area, to small groups of rural households, to portions of Culverden township itself, up to the CERT team. In turn, the team will pass on this information to an activated Emergency Operations Centre, which is able, in the event of a Canterbury-wide disaster, to pass it on to the Canterbury Civil Defence Emergency Management (CDEM) Group. This Hurunui intelligence could be added to information being received from across Canterbury and passed on to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA).

“We’re breaking the sector down into more manageable areas – smaller communities of maybe two or three farms or smaller rural communities, and then identifying two or three people in each area who could be part of the Civil Defence network,” Grigg says.

“It has to be manageable. During an event like an earthquake, it takes time to get information, and an effective CDEM response depends on getting that full assessment of the situation on the ground, in the shortest possible timeframe. Creating these smaller community response teams speeds up the flow of information, which will then speed up the response — where our communities get the help they need — so they are incredibly valuable.”

Local knowledge — of people and places — is key, and the depth of community information the group shares is impressive, Grigg says. “There could also be potential for this developing CDEM network to also connect with North Canterbury Neighbourhood Support, which is also looking to develop community networks in the Hurunui District.”

The group, led by Culverden Civil Defence coordinator and retired farmer Gregor McKenzie, will bring together the people they have shoulder tapped for these community response roles, perhaps for a barbeque, and a discussion on their new roles and responsibilities.

“There’s an incredible energy and a really great vibe coming through,” says Grigg.

Civil Defence preparedness and response training is carried out across Hurunui District’s nine Civil Defence sectors of Cheviot; Hawarden-Waikari; Culverden; Hanmer Springs; Waiau; Waipara; Motanau-Scargil-Greta Valley; Amberley and Mt Lyford.

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