Due to the significance of the Auckland floods and Cyclone Gabrielle, an internal operational review into Fire and Emergency New Zealand’s response has been undertaken. It is our usual practice to carry out reviews of significant incidents to learn from them and to support our ongoing improvement.
The Operational Review provides Key Insights into six areas of our response that will further help us improve our organisational approach to policy and operational procedures.
As severe weather events become more common and unpredictable, we need to be agile, adapting our knowledge and training as the types of emergencies we respond to change. Work is underway to address the Key Insights identified, with some work already completed based on early observations made after the events.
We would like to thank the authors of this report and those of our people who have contributed. It took courage to stand up to tell their stories and talk about where we can do things better.