Special Community Meeting Tuesday 9 September 2014 Pipitea Marae and Function Centre TRA would like to thank all those residents and business owners who attended the meeting and offered valuable discussion and ideas to move Thorndon/Pipitea forward in both emergency management and community cohesiveness. Minutes from the meeting Community Response
Are your neighbours there/at home?
Are they all right?
Need for updated information. How to obtain it?
There will be people who need help
Should we have steps built now down to the motorway? To provide cross motorway access in the event of an earthquake and the bridges not being usable.
Sanitation/water – how to meet needs (especially if people working in the city have to vacate their buildings and cannot get home). Dig holes (use the town belt if no garden)
Schools need to have clear guidelines (do they retain pupils at school or do they try to go home?
Who are your neighbours? How can you get to know them better?
Talk to them
Kids stuff: pre school, school run, playgrounds, play groups, swimming pool?
Walking historical tours
Be aware of the gathering points/places
Neighbourly.co.nz
Body corporate ensuring neighbours meet and know each other
Cul-de-sacs
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Street parties, picnics, parties and barbeques, Christmas picnic in the Katherine Mansfield Gardens
Messages in letterboxes
Connecting apartment dwellers with neighbours in the street. Encourage apartment block street to join walking group
Adopt an apartment block/boarding house
What skills do you have in your area – you can only know this by getting to know neighbours
Ensure we know who the vulnerable are (disabled, elderly, special needs children/ Kimi Ora, young families, students etc)
Children’s garden or community garden
Thorndon/ Pipitea has a large number of commuters from outside the area coming to work each day, passing through Thorndon/Pipitea; there are also 3,500 plus school children and we do not know these people. Perhaps we need an article in the local paper or on the TRA blog explaining this to our weekly transient population. Weekends are quieter, however should the stadium be full for an event there would be a large number of ‘out of Thorndon/Pipitea’ present in the area.
Formally organised meet the neighbours day @ community centre (if there was one)
Gym – City Fitness – meet neighbours who attend
What is in your defence kit? What is in your neighbours’ civil defence kit?
‘Show us your kit’ party or competition
Occupancy tags (apartment buildings)
Family plan
‘GRAB and GO’ bag
Personal alarm
Toilet paper, buckets and plastic bags, long drops (how to build one)
Cash and Photocopy important documents
Medical and prescription details. Control of dispensing of pharmaceuticals to those critically dependent on specific medicines
Pet food and supplies
Jacobs ladder Page 2 of 8
Canned foods and can opener
Sleeping bag
First aid kit
BBQ
Tarpaulin (heavy duty)
Wheelie bin as storage for your emergency kit
3 days worth of food and water
Items distributed throughout the house so you can access supplies if part of the house/building is damaged/inaccessible
Torch (wind up) and glow sticks, lanterns and candles, lighters
Disposable masks and gloves
Heavy duty shoes and heavy jersey
Location of portable water (streams)
Water purification tablets and Dettol, hand sanitiser, bleach
Crow bar, wrench, spades, auger
Radio
Spare batteries
Getting everyone responsible for themselves in the first instance (cannot rely on emergency services, New World, medical centres, WREMO or the Civil Defence venue
Civil Defence Centre needs to build a register of essential tools and skills
Analogue phone $15 at the Warehouse
Writing material/ pen/pencil
Water tank available from WCC
What do we like/enjoy about living in Thorndon/Pipitea? What should we be aware of?
Close to the CBD – close to work
Mixture of children and adults
Trees and gardens
Cafes, pubs and restaurants Page 3 of 8
Should be aware of gas and fire, falling debris, unsafe roads (cracks)
What community facilities does Thorndon/Pipitea have to support us?
Hire Pool (heavy equipment)
Old St Pauls
Cathedrals
Bridge Clubs
Thorndon School
Queen Margaret College
Pipitea Marae
Wellington Girls’ College
St Marys’ College
Sacred Heart School
Government Departments/offices
Parliament
Embassies and High Commissions
Supermarket
Furniture retailers
Steel manufacturers
Premier House
Carpenters and renovators
Railway Station
Law School
School of Government
Courts
Civil Defence Centre – many asked where it was – actually at the Thorndon School. Issue: there may be a need for a second Civil Defence Centre on the Tinakori Road side of the motorway valley.
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What do you value in this community? Why do you like being part of this community?
People
Turnbull Library/National Library
Physically close to neighbours
Proximity to the motorway, railway station and ferries
Location/proximity to the city, transport, emergency services, stadium
Employment
Compact and some high density dwellings
Restaurants
Thorndon Fair
Farmers Market
Safe environment
Established landscape
Communities within Thorndon/Pipitea
Service providers – hairdressers, doctors, chemists
Village effect
Mix of ages, metropolitan mix, flatters, students, owners – broad demographic
Quiet
Close to town belt
Commercial/residential mix
Heritage and newer buildings
Old preserved buildings, plus modernised buildings in keeping with the area and modern buildings – evolving community
Sense of pride in the Thorndon/Pipitea community
Active community crafts, sport, sport groups etc
Heritage
Caring families Page 5 of 8
What do the people in our community have in common?
Live or work in Thorndon
Able to get home from work more readily than others in an emergency
Depend on Thorndon utilities
Share the same risks (e.g. fault line)
Value living close to the city
Middle/Upper income bracket
Marae
Transient community (daytime), commuters/parkers, parliament, walkers to town, tourists, school pupils, churches, embassies, High Commission visitors
Large number of embassies/residences
Stadium
Old St Pauls
Bridge Clubs, Swimming Pool, Tennis Club, shops and cafes
Interest in community affairs
Awareness of the fault line, slip areas
The character of the suburb
Is Thorndon/Pipitea a geographical area or is it a community? Why?
It is both geographic and community
Legal boundaries
School draws students from a large area
Has residential and commercial/government activities
Work area and residential
Sea defines it and the hills
Has the activities of a community e.g. playgroups, swimming pool, doctors, shops, cafes, restaurants
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What special challenges would our community face in an emergency and what are some solutions?
Thorndon School – location of the Civil Defence Centre for Thorndon/Pipitea – What are their Terms of Reference? Who mans it? Thorndon School will be going into a rebuild programme – what happens to the Civil Defence Centre? Is it locked? How to access? Not open all the time.
Central area for co ordination in an emergency – gathering points
Emergency services will evacuate to higher ground to ensure they are safe and able to come down back into action. Not really a community resource. How many in the community are first aid trained to triage and treat walking wounded level?
Voluntary registration of residents’ skills or neighbourly groups
Body Corporate responsibilities – vertical neighbourhoods
Council initiatives - Compostable public toilets established – can they be used by in an emergency?
What can we do to help people get home?
Pets? What to do with them. Owners wherever possible must take responsibility for their own pets. Animals that are registered and ‘chipped’ will be able to be returned to owners should they panic and run.
Water tanks should be established across the city by WCC and Regional Council
Be aware of apartment building ratings, a list of vulnerable buildings would be useful (this is available on the WCC website for a number of buildings
If renting will you be allowed back into your home? Legal rights of re entry. Issue: If an owner has a home seriously damaged and owns another home in Thorndon/Pipitea they may want to give notice to tenants so they can move into a better property.
Do you know where the Thorndon/Pipitea Civil Defence Centre is?
A number of residents were very confused between the Civil Defence Centre (most did not know where it was), the Wellington Regional Emergency Office (WREMO) does not help directly in an emergency – it is a co ordination/control centre feeding back to the Government Emergency management Centre (under the Beehive). More people must be made aware of these issues.
PERSONAL RESPONSIBILTY must be made aware to residents d=for at least the first 3 days and possibly weeks afterwards
Where can people go who are displaced?
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Influx of thousands of office workers – accommodate homeless residents and workers/students
Places to erect tents
Sharing of the facilities that are available
Reliable communication to citizens
Marshall points well established and communicated
Loss of utilities
Medical problems
Security - homes and business issues
Local gathering points. Who sets these up and communicates them to the community. This will be partly decided on the land that remains safe and buildings that remain safe enough to enter (noting there will be aftershocks)
Use of acronyms for some people e.g. CDC – Civil Defence Centre, WREMO - Wellington Regional Emergency Management Office, TRA – Thorndon Residents Association, WCC – Wellington City Council
Civil Defence community wide simulation exercise
Emergency neighbourhood watch set up
Secure food and water stocks
Water supply crosses the Wellington fault line 15 times on its route down from Te Marua
Gas supply automatically shuts down in a major emergency (there would still be residual gas in the neighbourhood pipelines)
How to mitigate the risk of fire?
Needs depend on the different time of day – night/day
First Aid providers/medical personnel need to be easily identifiable in an emergency (arm bands, vests)
Emergency Plan for Thorndon/Pipitea on the TRA website and WCC and following action communicated by TRA pamphlet and local news papers, plus voluntary events e.g. Civil Defence training
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