Perspective with Andrew Dickens: Here's my concern about the emergency alerts

Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive

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So the national emergency alarm that bugged a nation was the big talking point in New Zealand today.

There's a million stories about the alarm, and here's mine:

The first alarm yesterday afternoon at 4:30pm I welcomed. I'd been out and about and didn't know about the Russian earthquake. So I looked up the story and quickly ascertained there were hours before this could become a problem.

This was important because my partner was commuting home on a ferry at 5:40pm and we needed to know if anything would happen. I checked the AT app and phoned her and the day continued on as normal.

The next alarm this morning was interesting. We knew of the threat and we knew that it was around about then that waves would arrive. So I expected an update on the wave strength after tsunami monitoring across the oceans.

None of that info was there. It was the same alert as last night.

So, again, we looked up the story and again, we decided it would be fine so Helen went off to catch the 8am ferry. As she left, she said if there's going to be a wave then she'd rather be on a big boat than on the esplanade. I think that was a joke.

As it turned out everybody ignored the alert this morning. People walked dogs on beaches. The north-western motorway causeway did not close. Nor did Tamaki Drive.

Then the Minister came on with Kerre to explain why we had these alarms. I thought the main takeaway from that was so that we could make an informed decision. Which my family did.

So I don't mind the alerts. I'd rather have a false alarm than no alarm at all in a dangerous decision. But the fear here is that people will begin to ignore all alerts and not make informed decisions - and that could end badly.

But my main concern is that the information did not seem to be updated in the 12 hours after the earthquake hit. I wonder if our ocean monitoring is working - and if it isn't, then that's the real concern.

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