On 5 January 2012, a meeting of Parklands Recovery Group responded to the 23 December aftershock upsurge, and rising community anxiety, as follows. For our work ahead, three priorities are specified:
a. Burwood Resource Recovery Park – there must be no exemption from standard operational safety requirements as applied to every other dump in Canterbury.
b. Land Zoning concerns – see Parklands Safety Plan (draft below).
c. Transparency is urgently requested around the Prime Minister’s and the Christchurch Mayor’s earthquake emergency relief funds: how to apply, who to, and what are the details of disbursements so far?
Parklands Safety Plan
1. Don’t panic – do not flee from imaginary threats
Earthquakes remain the most significant life-threatening natural hazard in Canterbury, so learn sound means for staying safe around buildings. If you feel a major earthquake, stay off the beaches (for 48 hours or until an all-clear is notified). This is standard coastal advice to adhere to anywhere, but in Pegasus Bay the geology is highly unlikely to ever produce large tsunami. A distant-sourced, 1-2 metre wave is the greater possibility from this type of hazard, but is rare and harmless if managed correctly.[1] Most injury in an emergency comes from unplanned flight and rushing about in the dark. Please don’t panic, keep yourselves safe:
2. Household Safety Plan
Every home needs one of these. A checklist of essential items and preparations appears overleaf [the Parklands Safety Plan will become a two-sided advice page for distribution].
3. Have a secondary destination planned
Think through where you will go and how you will get there, should your home suddenly become uninhabitable. Think of alternative routes and means of transport, should they become necessary. Keep your portable emergency kit ready to go.
4. Collective appraisal of local well-being and risk
Street groups work together to decide immediate needs and solutions. In this way reason can balance the hysteria caused by extreme events, for keeping everyone safe and supplied with the essentials of life and good information.
5. Prepare for the long haul and support each other
Families and neighbourhoods under stress need to stick together and work through the situation step by step, patiently. There are so many people dealing with the same pressures, and with government and agency support stretched so thin, that no response can happen quickly or without your steady management of it.
6. Open communication channels widely
Each neighbourhood group in the suburb needs to know about each other. Post your contact person details – names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses – in prominent places so that connections can be established beforehand, and then utilised to bring people together in an emergency.
N.B. The Parklands Safety Plan is intended to be a quick guide and decision-making tree, to assist distraught residents everywhere, for any emergency.
[1] Ref. Emergencies and Hazards ecan.govt.nz/advice re: Earthquake hazards and Tsunami + Tsunami information for Christchurch after the earthquakes + read the ECan Q-Files on Earthquakes, Tsunamis, Liquefaction etc. + Canterbury Civil Defence Emergency Management Group notices + Christchurch earthquakes city council page + Earthquake help at getthru.govt.nz – what to do.
Canterbury earthquake hazard map - ECan CDEM
Parklands Recovery Group 