It follows Southland's mayor saying the council will be looking into reports of the website going down.
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake struck 40km north of Te Anau at 9.14pm, sparking an order to evacuate coastal areas along the West Coast, from Milford Sound to Puysegur Point.
The emergency was downgraded about half an hour later and the evacuation order was cancelled.
Mitchell told Checkpoint he would be meeting National Emergency Management Agency officials next week to follow up and make sure he was satisfied that the fix had been made.
The reality was, there was a glitch with the website and "that's gotta be fixed", he said.
Mitchell denied claims that an emergency alert text was not sent out.
Checkpoint's Lisa Owen read out texts from listeners who said they didn't get any alerts and were left in the dark about what was happening.
He said the individual cases would need to be looked into - and there would be an explanation as to why those people didn't receive a text.
He said it was possible they were out of coverage.
Mitchell said New Zealand's emergency response was "world-class" and other countries looked to it to help their own response.
Meanwhile, GeoNet this afternoon said there had been dozens of aftershocks.
"Since the main shock, we have recorded 34 aftershocks in this sequence. So far we have recorded 9 larger than M3.5, and the largest was a M4.6 recorded at 2:26 pm today."
Earlier, Southland Mayor Rob Scott said it was good that people took the tsunami warning seriously.
"It's been quite a shake down there, but it's been quite pleasing to hear that that risk has been minimised and there's no need for an evacuation, although I was talking to people connected to people out at Milford Sound, because there are people staying out there.
"They did the right thing, they got to higher ground straight afterwards, so it was pleasant to hear that people did the right thing at the time".
However, he said it appeared the Civil Defence website buckled under pressure.
"I had heard that the site had gone down due to demand, which is something we'll have to look at".
He said the region had escaped relatively unscathed.
"I've heard so far that everyone is OK and there's been a little bit of damage to some of the properties in terms of cracking in houses and the like, but the important thing is that so far, I've heard that everyone is OK."
Scott said the earthquake was a reminder that an emergency can happen at any time.
The tsunami warning was also cancelled late last night.
Nema said there were no tsunami signals detected by Earth Sciences in the two hours after the event, showing there was no ongoing tsunami activity affecting the area and the threat had passed.
Website issues
An investigation into why the website crashed would be carried out. A spokesperson could not confirm when the site went down, or how long for, but said it was back online before the warning was downgraded around midnight.
He said early indications were the site failed due to a firewall issue.
An emergency mobile alert went out to about 40 people living in Milford Sound.
Civil Defence director John Price told Morning Report people should not rely on technology, and trust their "human danger sense". He said it was impossible to be "100 percent ready".
"We do live in a very vulnerable area. People need to be prepared, they need to have a plan."
The only road in and out of Milford Sound reopened on Friday afternoon.
State Highway 94 was closed from Te Anau to Milford Sound after the quake as a precaution. The road reopened after inspections of the bridge, tunnel and other hazards by NZTA.
Queenstown Lakes District Council said the Edith Cavell Bridge near Arthurs Point also closed for inspection, but had since reopened.
This story was first published on rnz.co.nz |  |
