Why you might not have received an Auckland emergency alert
Monday, 30 January 2023
Auckland phones buzzed with a thunderstorm emergency alert on Sunday evening, sparking more confusion than answers.
Seconds after the alert was published, social media flooded with people puzzled that they never received an alert on Friday, when the region was hit with a devastating storm.
Even more people were baffled at why they never received an alert at all.
Tracey Baird, 42, was in that boat.
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She lives in Te Hihi which was severely hit by the storm with road slips and flooding, Baird said.
“I have two teenage girls and my husband and I. We all have phones, but none of us got it.
“We had fire services asking people with four-wheel drives to come and help out. Knowing we were going to have more significant rain overnight, we should have been informed,” she said.
Auckland Emergency Management spokesperson Rachel Kelleher said mobile alerts, which were only one of the ways the group delivered information, wouldn’t reach everyone.
Emergency Mobile Alerts send out alerts to all phones connected to cell towers in certain areas, Kelleher said.
Those on the outskirts of Auckland, who were connected to cell towers further away, may not receive the message.
“The alert system is one tool we use to reach communities. It’s not going to reach every single person, every time,” she said.
Some phones did not have the capability to receive these messages, while areas outside cell coverage would also be dead zones for alert messages, she said.
“The alerts are just one tool. They are not going to get information to everyone for those range of reasons I’ve described.
“I would encourage people to use the standard channels for weather information. MetService and Auckland Emergency Management have Facebook pages.
“We also have news channels to get that information out there,” she said.
As to why alerts were not sent on Friday, Kelleher said the floods hit quickly and were more dangerous than they expected.
“It [the Friday floods] escalated very, very quickly and the magnitude was something that no-one could have predicted,” she said.
On Sunday, Kelleher said, the timeframe leading up to the alert was “quite different”.
“The alert last night was in response to a thunderstorm warning that had been issued. Thunderstorms can move very quickly.
“Thunderstorms can bring short and intense rain bursts. We know, at the moment with ground conditions, that can cause issues,” she said.
Kelleher also stressed that now was not the time for Aucklanders to sit back
Tāmaki Makaurau was facing another heavy rain warning from Tuesday 6pm until Wednesday 6am, with north Auckland in for the worst of it.
Kelleher said Auckland Emergency Management didn’t yet know whether another emergency alert would be necessary.
“We may not use the emergency management alert system because we have plenty of lead-in-time to give people advice about that warning using normal channels,” Kelleher said.