Up to 20 police, some of them armed, searched the area around the prison yesterday after convicted armed robber Kevin Polwart cut his way through a double perimeter fence and escaped.
The Corrections Department has launched a review into the escape from a lower security workshop yesterday morning.
The escape was noticed until just before midday.
Police said Polwart, described as a 49-year-old Maori, 165cm tall, and of medium build, should not be approached.
He was eight years into a sentence for the armed robbery of a security van and related offences.
Local residents were urged to check their homes and vehicles and anyone finding their homes insecure should contact police before going inside.
Details of the escape would not be able to be fully determined until a review into the escape had been completed, but it appeared Polwart managed to break through the perimeter fence in the workshop, Corrections national operations manager Robin Benefield said.
Mr Benefield could say how long it had taken before it was noticed that Polwart had escaped, nor why it took up to two hours to tell residents of the escape.
In 2001 Polwart escaped from Upper Hutt's Rimutaka Prison where he was serving 10 years for aggravated robbery when he and his brother stole $600,000 in a security van robbery at Paraparaumu in 1999.
While on the run he committed another robbery on an Armourguard van in Auckland before he was recaptured in Porirua, north of Wellington.
