The race against time for people trapped in floodwaters

Source: Radio New Zealand

Fire and Emergency (FENZ) has been struggling to respond quickly to some rescue callouts when big storms hit – including one last month when a man died, well-placed sources say.

The specialist team in last month’s case near Ōtorohanga took 50 minutes to get out the door after they got the call for help. The team has been asking themselves if they could have saved his life, if they had been put on alert much earlier.

“We knew that every minute goes by, it’s not great for us. So there was a bit of angst in the appliance, you could feel it, the guys just want to get there and do what they’re trained for,” said a person with knowledge of what happened, who was not authorised to discuss the matter publicly.

RNZ knows of two other emergencies – one in January at Welcome Bay in Tauranga and another in Nelson in July – where sources believe FENZ did not get specialist teams to flood rescues quickly enough because the crews were not pre-deployed and ready to go, despite plenty of warning.

After the Nelson storm, FENZ was warned its systems had been slow.

But the agency has defended its response in all three cases.

It declined to be interviewed, but in a statement said water rescue teams were a national resource approved with national oversight to ensure they were deployed to areas of greatest need.

It pre-deployed swift water teams “when appropriate to do so” after local operational leaders had discussed it with police – who are in charge of co-ordinating water rescues – and Civil Defence.

Swift water rescues are not a core FENZ function. But they do come under “additional functions” in the legislation, which says it is allowed to help with them “to the extent that FENZ has the capability and capacity to do so” and as long as it retained its capacity to fight fires.

The swift water teams were in a fledgling form when Cyclone Gabrielle hit in early 2023, and some members have talked to RNZ about getting a “kick in the guts” from lacking the gear to do enough when the cyclone and the Auckland anniversary floods hit.

The problems with swift water predeployment and responding were not uniform, several sources said. Some districts were better than others at standing up teams or getting them out the door, and were improving. But they said headquarters was a problem.

It also did not help that not all local or volunteer brigades even knew that calling on them was an option, while there seemed to be no standard way for communications centres to let them know at the very start.

“In my opinion, they’ve struggled to be proactive to put teams into areas that potentially will need flood response,” said one of the several sources.

Time was never on their side. As floodwaters rose, any swift water team became less able to get in at all.

“We weren’t really going to be much use if we just turned up as it was kicking off.”

Ōtorohanga

A man in his 70s died after his vehicle was submerged on State Highway 39 near Ōtorohanga on the evening of 13 February.

A severe thunderstorm red warning for south Waikato and Ōtorohanga had gone out from MetService at 4.40pm that Friday afternoon, and another red warning was valid from 7pm.

That did not trigger pre-deployment of the closest swift water teams at Rotorua fire station to south Waikato.

The call logs showed that when it was called to go to the scene that night, it took 50 minutes to get on the road.

Twenty-two minutes of that was spent securing approval through a chain involving national commanders, and the rest spent getting ready for the job.

The first alert from the flooded highway was raised at 8.36pm by the Pirongia volunteer brigade, which FENZ said was “out supporting their community when they became aware of this developing incident”.

The call log suggested initially the volunteers knew they had “a couple of people trapped in flood water” and also that “a patient is currently trapped in flood water on top of a tractor”.

Three times in the next half hour the brigade asked for a helicopter or lines rescue team from Hamilton.

FENZ in a statement said: “It wasn’t initially clear that the person trapped on the tractor required medical rescue.

“A lines rescue team is not trained to undertake rescues in water. The condition of the person trapped in a ute in floodwaters was not known at 20.52.”

At 9.13pm, Pirongia was asked if the rescue was only for those on the tractor, and responded that the patient and firefighter on top of the tractor “tried to rescue some one else in a ute but lost sight of it”.

A few minutes later, the two people on the tractor were reported safe.

At 8.56pm, the log showed FENZ people in Waikato were “in conference” and requested the swift water team from Rotorua.

But the swift water team did not leave Rotorua till 50 minutes later at 9.46pm, and they never made it.

It took 22 minutes for the request to deploy them to work its way to the National Commanders Group for approval at 9.07pm, then to be passed on to Rotorua at 9.18pm.

It took another 28 minutes for the swift water team to get ready – some had to come in from home outside Rotorua – and out the door.

“For some reason our team just takes ages to get approved from like the bigwigs,” said an informed source.

They faced a 120km trip to the trapped man. They had been on the road for a few minutes when the call came in just before 10pm that he had died.

They were then diverted to Ōtorohanga, where they rescued at least 18 people in the dark from a house.

By contrast, fire callouts typically trigger much faster responses and times are tightly tracked against targets, which are reported back to Parliament.

FENZ told RNZ that pre-deploying a water rescue team was not raised by the Pirongia volunteer brigade.

The storm was “particularly severe” and it had received 800 calls on 111 about the storm on Friday and Saturday.

But it was focused on the risk of landslides, it said.

Weather modelling indicated the main risk was land instability and FENZ consulted Civil Defence, which was the lead on landslides.

“One request was received for support from a specialists water rescue team in Tairāwhiti, which was agreed to.

“There were no other requests.”

It predeployed Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) crew who deal with slips to the East Coast, Bay of Plenty and Wairarapa.

Welcome Bay – rescuing the rescuers

The month before Ōtorohanga, the Rotorua swift water team took hours to get to a rescue near Papamoa, on the night before the fatal landslide at Mt Maunganui campground on 22 January.

A red severe rain warning for Bay of Plenty had gone out at 9am the previous day – a Wednesday – and a local state of emergency was declared.

But most of the swift water team was not pre-deployed, either at Rotorua or closer to Tauranga, according to a FENZ message log and the police record.

When a call came from police about 12.30am overnight Wednesday-Thursday to rescue a “person trapped in flood water in car” near Papamoa, the Rotorua team was approved to go a half hour later.

But they were not actually assembled and sent.

“We are still in bed asleep at home when it is all going down,” said one of the sources.

Instead, a NZ Defence Force unimog with some police and firefighters on board went, and ended up rescuing four elderly people.

It was only when the unimog got stuck in a culvert about 4am, that the swift water team was sent from Rotorua station.

It was 5.45am before they reported in the log: “Swift water rescue just entering the water now.”

They eventually got to the unimog about 6am. The rescued people who had been on it for several hours had “mild hypothermia”.

Police told RNZ: “They were wet and cold but otherwise uninjured.”

Earlier, at just after midnight, police had called the unimog for help, but were told the vehicle was a transport – not a rescue asset – and that police should call swift water rescue instead.

“FENZ were contacted to deploy a swift water rescue team,” police told RNZ.

The swift water team at Rotorua was approved to go at 1.08am.

A fourth informed source said the unimog was under the assumption they were on their way – but they were not.

Police told RNZ that instead they discussed with FENZ the difficulty of getting in past rising waters, so went back to the unimog.

This time the unimog did set off, with some swift water rescue-trained FENZ staff and two police officers on board.

They rescued people on Waitao Road in Welcome Bay, but events then overwhelmed resources.

Driving back to dry land, the unimog hit slip debris hidden underwater and went into the culvert.

“We need water rescue,” came their call at 3.49am.

“Can we get swift water rescue activated as the Unimog is stuck with people in it… trapped and semi submerged… 12 POB [people on board].”

The water was 1.5m deep. Police told RNZ: “The unimog driver advised police that the occupants of the vehicle were in no immediate danger.”

The Rotorua swift water team was called for a second time.

A source familiar with this said: “Bear in mind as we were not pre-deployed, the team was at home, had to drive to station and uplift equipment and transportation.”

They then drove 70km to Welcome Bay. They unloaded their raft as close as they could get to the unimog and, joined by surf lifesavers, went in.

Meantime, a car had come down the hill “and hit the flooded water – no movement or headlights have been seen since”.

“Can you make swift water rescue aware and if further information is need[ed] they can speak to the stranded police officers on the unimog,” said the log.

At 6.20am the swift water team was coming back with the rescued people from the unimog in a raft to a chopper on a dry bit of road to fly people out, while another team was “heading further up to a car that is under water”.

“There wasn’t concern” by then, said another source. “Water levels were receding, it was shin deep.”

At 7.39am the FENZ call log said: “All crews back to dry ground inc life savers … all patients rescued.”

Nelson – ‘The public’s not probably getting the best bang for buck’

After last year’s Nelson storm, FENZ headquarters was warned its systems were too slow. National commanders took hours to approve swift water teams to pre-deploy from Christchurch and Wellington.

Instead of getting there in daylight, they arrived about 3am the next morning, almost 24 hours after the first members had been called in down in Canterbury.

It is understood the warning triggered an operational review, which RNZ has asked to see. FENZ said the review was ongoing.

“We can’t be turning up and being exhausted,” said an informed source.

“The decisions not to pre-deploy or [use] us could have catastrophic outcomes for the public, but it’s also for our people, too.”

The frustration about when they got pre-deployed by national commanders – or were approved to actually go to a rescue – appeared strongest at the front line.

“We’re at home having dinner while they [flood victims] are there getting stuck,” said a third informed source.

Several sources suggested the policy should be that if a known flood-risk area, or one recently flooded, got a red weather alert, that should trigger swift water predeployment.

The swift water rescue teams based at Christchurch – two teams of four usually go out in utes and trailers – were called in four times to Nelson-Marlborough in the floods of June and July 2025.

Three times they made it, and a source said that pre-deployment had worked pretty well.

But the fourth time on 29 July was the worst flooding – and the slowest response.

After waiting all day for a green light, crews set off themselves, even though night was falling. Nelson had already been drenched – it should have been a quick, easy decision to pre-deploy, they felt.

As it was, they made their first rescue around the same time they would have been just arriving in Nelson had they delayed and left the next morning.

“The public’s not probably getting the best bang for buck.

“It’s also our volunteers and our firefighters that may not have that resource and will have to make a harder call than they would have needed to if we’d already been there.”

“If the event had carried on any longer … our own personal safety would have been [at] higher risk because we were just so tired because we had to drive through the night.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand