The closure of the State Highway 1 Ashburton/Hakatere River Bridge at 7pm on Sunday due to flooding was officially announced by Waka Kotahi/NZ Transport Agency at 4.40pm, but the Mackenzie District Council had already made the announcement an hour earlier via its social media channels.
Ashburton Mayor Neil Brown was not impressed, telling councillors at Tuesday’s meeting that chief executive Hamish Riach had contacted his counterpart in Mackenzie for an explanation and received an apology.
“We chose not to create unnecessary alarm and wait until Waka Kotahi had actually made a decision.”
What transpired was that Waka Kotahi had indicated to Ashburton’s emergency operating centre that it was considering closing the bridge at 7pm as a safety precaution and would confirm any decision an hour later, Brown said.
That advisory was also sent to other councils and Mackenzie “missed the words 'likely' and 'will be confirmed', and they just put it out there” when the decision hadn’t been finalised, Brown said.
In a statement, Mackenzie chief executive Angela Oosthuizen said staff released the information after an agency meeting with Waka Kotahi and “misunderstood the urgency of getting the information out”.
“In hindsight, it would have been preferable to wait for Waka Kotahi to release the information and for us to have shared that.
“I apologised to Ashburton’s chief executive for any inconvenience caused by the earlier release of the information.”
Riach stood by the decision to wait for official confirmation before alerting the public of the impending closure.
“Once we received confirmation of the closure, we had an update out to the public within five minutes.
“As with any Civil Defence activation, we'll be holding a debrief to see what worked well, with the focus firmly set on how our council performed.”
- By Jonathan Leask
Local Democracy reporter
Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air
