Cyclone Gabrielle: Hydrologist took two hours to tell Civil Defence about equipment failure

A hydrologist in charge of flood forecasting during the deadly Cyclone Gabrielle could not explain why it took two hours for him to tell Civil Defence about a failure with the river level monitoring equipment due to a power outage.

Craig Goodier was the flood forecaster for Hawke's Bay Regional Council during the devastating weather event, and was tasked with monitoring the flooding and rainfall, and identifing which areas would be at risk.

He was questioned at the Coroner's Inquest about delays in his communication with local officials, and whether his language about the flood risk accurately conveyed the urgency and threat to life.

• The second phase of a Coroner's Inquest into the deaths of 13 people in relation to Cyclone Gabrielle in Hawke's Bay is underway at the Hastings District Court.
• A scathing review of the Hawke's Bay Regional Council's flood protections found that flood risk was underestimated and there was limited planning or processes in place for know floodplains.
• The flood review, which made 47 recommendations, found some uncertainty in the regional council's language when communicating the flood risk to Civil Defence.
• Regional Council hydrologist Craig Goodier was the council's flood forecaster during the cyclone, and told the court on Monday it was "unlikely" the magnitude of flooding could have been accurately forecast.

During the cyclone, evacuation orders were not made in time and hundreds of people were forced onto their roofs to try and escape rising floodwaters. In Eskdale, the worst of the flooding occured from about midnight on 13 February, when the entire valley began filling with fast flowing floodwaters that were so powerful they swept an entire house about 700 metres down State Highway 5.

An official emergency wasn't declared until about four hours later at 4.04am on 14 February, and an Emergency Mobile Alert wasn't issued until 5.19am. By which time two people had already drowned in Eskdale.

Just after 12am on 14 February, a power outage resulted in communication failing for 12 of the council's sites that were gathering data about rising river levels. While the sensors continued to gather data, that information was not being sent back to Goodier because of the telecommunications failure.

Goodier said he wasn't aware of this problem until about four hours later, at 4am. Upon discovery, he contacted the flood duty manager and they tried rebooting the system and calling IT, but couldn't get the system working again.

The Coroner's lawyer, Mathew Mortimer-Wang asked Craig Goodier if at that point, he informed Group Emergency Coordination Centre or other Civil Defence Emergency Management organisations who were relying on him for flooding data.

"I don't think I told them at that point in time," said the hydrologist. Mortimer-Wang pressed Goodier on whether he told anyone else about the problem before 6:37am on 14 Febraury. "No I don't think so," replied Goodier.

"Assuming you knew around 4.30am, why did it take two hours to let them know?" asked Mortimer-Wang.

"I can't recall exactly what I was doing... there was still telemetry that was working so we were still monitoring as much as we could. I can't explain the delay in time," said Goodier.

The data gathered from river telemetry systems gives real time information about how rivers are responding to rainfall in each catchment. In Cyclone Gabrielle, a number of rivers busted through stopbanks and bridges, such as the Tutaekuri River and the Ngaruroro River which flooded large residential areas and claimed several lives.

When asked if the river level information impacted by the power outage at that time was significant, Goodier said there were still concerns, although rainfall was easing.

"I didn't think it was all over by any means, but the level of what happened spiralled significantly larger than what we thought and we certainly weren't seeing the rainfall in the area of concern"

Council hydrologist: 'I don't yell and scream'

On Monday, the court heard about how two days before the devastating flood hydrologist Craig Goodier had signalled in a catchment summary there could be a risk to Eskdale residents.

"Consider vacating Esk holiday park and any other at risk areas," it read.

Another summary on 13 February said: "Houses on Shaw Rd may be at risk. Could be similar to March 2018. Campgrounds have already been evacuated."

The court was shown an email sent at 2:10am on 14 February, from Goodier to Civil Defence and the emergency operations centre.

"Esk at Waipunga now 8.19m. This is likely the highest ever measured on Esk," it read.

At 2:25am he sent another email: "Probably best to consider any house in Esk valley may be at risk."

Mortimer-Wang asked Goodier whether his comments were 'generalised' and did not communicate the actual risk to life.

"I would accept that I don't yell and scream, I just put out facts as I see them. I'm not trying to under emphasise something, but equally that's the way I convey the message," said Goodier.

Goodier was questioned about whether he could have better communicated to officials the seriousness of this information, that there wasn't just the existance of a risk, but a threat to life.

"In hindsight I think I could have used better language," Goodier conceded.

He couldn't say what words would have been more suitable, but agreed the language needed to convey a greater risk to life.

"Yes there could be better wording."

Another point the coroner's lawyer emphasised, was whether Goodier's language was properly interpreted by civil defence and others as signalling the risks and threats of the situation.

"There could be a perceived mismatch. I'm a rather pedantic person... typical engineer - lets just state the facts and not put emotion into it," he said.

Emergency services and Civil Defence relied on hydrologist expertise

When the lawyer representing the 13 victims and their families, Jane Glover, began questioning Goodier - she explained that the families have a "lot of questions" for him as they see his role as being critical as a conduit of information from MetService to local authorities and emergency services.

She recapped earlier evidence from Fire and Emergency (FENZ) about how it relied upon Goodier's expertise as the flood forecaster. However, she said FENZ and Civil Defence did not get a sense from Goodier that this was going to be an extreme life threatening event.

"Therefore the steps they took in terms of planning and preparation were insufficient to cope with what did eventuate," said Glover.

She said this was because emergency services and Civil Defence staff were relying on Goodier's flood modelling and analysis of the situation to inform their decisions on what areas needed evacuating because there was a risk to life.

He replied that no one from FENZ was asking him who to evacuate, but Glover told him there was a liason person in the operations centre receiving Goodier's reports.

"I thought I provided enough information that they could make that decision," said Goodier.

Glover then asked: "Did you not understand that there was this direct correlation between the advice you were providing and what was being tasked to do on the ground?"

"No I don't think it's direct... there has to be another level of intelligence put over that," he said.

But Glover disputed that, saying the hydrologist was the person who "knew the most", hence why Civil Defence and emergency services came to him for flooding predictions.

"I thought I conveyed that information the best I could," Goodier said.

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