By Adam Burns
Residents in Banks Peninsula's Goughs Bay believe community leaders deserted them when they needed urgent support - following torrential rain in December.
Photo: Marie Haley
The event caused widespread damage, cutting the small isolated community off after the only road into the bay was washed away.
The summer storm caused chaos for the small Banks Peninsula community, and an event post-mortem has acknowledged several areas of improvement for the Christchurch City Council in how it responds to emergencies.
The report said it took about a week for civil defence to set up an emergency operations centre after the deluge.
Local resident Marie Haley said the community felt let down.
"We're still battling this," she said.
"We're still trying to get a phone line, we're still trying to be heard that we need some sort of cellphone coverage and that's part of the fact that their (council) response was so slow."
There was no recognition of how life threatening the situation was at the time, she said.
A total of eighteen areas of improvement in council's emergency response were outlined in its report.
Issues around communication were highlighted, with some residents describing the response as appalling.
Sandie Stewart speculated that some staff may have checked out, a fortnight out from Christmas.
"Maybe some of the people who were able to make a difference chose Christmas lunch over getting a hold of the phone company and getting the phones back up on track," she said.
"Or sending down a generator to see if the wi-fi was working."
Not having a direct line to residents should have sparked red flags for emergency responders, she said.
Photo: Supplied
Although there are ongoing issues with phone coverage in the bay, residents are happy with the progress reinstating Goughs Road.
Complaints were raised by locals at a community meeting in Akaroa in May which fed into council's review.
George Masefield hoped the council had learned some lessons.
"I just hope it's not put in the bloody drawer and left and forgotten about it," he said.
Christchurch's deputy mayor Andrew Turner said officials underestimated the gravity of the situation.
"Save for a number of phone calls, coming through to the call centre, the detail of the event perhaps wasn't as apparent as it might've been," he said.
He added there remained ongoing concerns around the communication infrastructure of the peninsula.
Council's civil defence emergency manager Brenden Winder said council needed to be more proactive around communication.
Winder said he acknowledged the disappointment of residents, but there were other factors including resourcing at the time of the event.
He said improvements have been made within the unit and it was looking at how it engages with communities, in more rural areas in future.
