Page 16, <strong>Ashburton</strong>’s The <strong>Courier</strong>, Thursday <strong>19</strong> <strong>September</strong> 20<strong>19</strong> Local news at www.starnews.co.nz 2205593
Local news at www.starnews.co.nz <strong>Ashburton</strong>’s The <strong>Courier</strong>, Thursday <strong>19</strong> <strong>September</strong> 20<strong>19</strong>, Page 17 Responses put to test Emergencyplanning and multipleagency response procedures were put to the test last week during an emergency planning exercise at <strong>Ashburton</strong> Hospital. The ‘‘table top’’ exercise, Urapare, theorised amock explosion in the stores area at <strong>Ashburton</strong> Hospital, which caused a fire and large quantities of smoke, which was later discovered to be hazardous. The participants in the exercise acted as if the event had really happened, but did not deploy reallife resources and equipment. <strong>Ashburton</strong> Hospital general manager Berni Marra was incident controller, and Fire and Emergency New Zealand the lead agency on the exercise. In the scenario, FENZ and the police were called, the fire was brought under control and a cordon put in place to protect staffand public from further hazards. A number of people were evacuated from the scene with injuries ranging from smoke inhalation and the irritant effects of smoke, to serious burns. ‘‘The test scenario went very well, but the whole point of testing our processes and response is to tease out deficiencies in the system and if we think we got everything right and have nothing to learn, then we may have missed the point somewhere,’’ Ms Mara said. The scenario posed some unique challenges and tested the basic principles in all emergency scenarios, including how and where the emergency operations centre would be set up, how the coordinated incident management structure (CIMS) would operate in practice, and how effective communications would be used to provide information, minimise harm orloss of life, damage to property or the environment, and the future ability to provide services. ‘‘A critical area and something that can always bedone better is the sharing of information and our management of communications to staff and the public we recognise for example that there are periods during an event when there are more things we don’t know than things we do, and that we can’t share fast enough but we can certainly share too quickly. Our challenge is to resolve those unknowns as quickly as we can, without risking saying something that later turns out to be inaccurate.’’ Ms Marra said the greatest value from the exercise was recognising and appreciating the part all agencies had to play in a multiagency Race bylaws get the tick response and that worked when they were needed. ‘‘The public should be reassured that, although all the agencies involved have experienced many reallife scenarios, that we take nothing for granted and that we continue to test our systems and to learn from the experience,’’ she said. Photo: St John <strong>Ashburton</strong> station manager Heather Keele (sitting right) was among those present during the emergency planning exercise. (Photo supplied). Funding through for domain gym equipment Funding, finally, has been sorted out for adult exercise equipment in the <strong>Ashburton</strong> Domain. <strong>Ashburton</strong> council’s Finance and Business Support Committee has approved $100,000 from the council’s Purchase and Improvement account for the gear. The allocation was agreed along time ago but was inadvertently missed out of the final Long Term Plan. The committee has now approved the money. It did so as it also approved a range of carryover funds, including $673,642 for water capital works, $144,348 for asset renewals (drinking water), and $375,232 for atreatment upgrade on the Methven/Springfield scheme. There were also carryovers in wastewater, stormwater, Three Waters, transportation, democracy, commercial property, cemeteries, parks and open spaces, and hall boards. Cr Neil Brown said he mentioned it every year, but funds had to be spent. He knew there were reasons some of the work had not been done, but ‘‘get into it and get it spent; we rate for it and people expect it to be spent’’. Mayor Donna Favel said the council was consulting in February onits draft plan for the <strong>Ashburton</strong> Domain and wondered if there would be any conflict with that and the funds for the exercise equipment. Finance manager Paul Brake said the money would not be spent until after consultation. Roads named Two roads in the Village Green subdivision south of Lake Hood will be known as Village Green Drive and Springdale Avenue. The subdivision is off Huntington Avenue, just to the east of Lake Hood Aquatic Park zone. A draft policy of water races has been approved by the <strong>Ashburton</strong> council’s bylaw committee for sign off by council on <strong>September</strong> 26, the final meeting for this term of council. Council started the bylaw work several years ago and has heard submissions on it. The work has involved reviewing the 2012 bylaw and an existing policy on the closure of races. The aim is to bring the operational aspects of the policy into standard form to explain how the council manages applications to close races. There are several thousands kilometres of races in the district. Many have been closed. Some farmers want the races; many do not. Land owners pay a race rate even if they do not use or need the water. Council is also working with irrigation companies on supplying water for stock. In all, council passed 20 recommendations. In some instances where applications have been made to close races, some have wanted them closed and some have not. Akey recommendation is that the bylaw subcommittee refer all submissions concerning the funding of the water race network to areview of the council’s Revenue and Financing Policy. The network is funded through a targeted rate, and it ran at adeficit in 2017/18 and 2018/<strong>19</strong>. That deficit ‘‘may affect what the council considers an affordable level of service in the short to medium term’’. A report to the committee that several submitters addressed the question of how to fund stock races in future One of the last submitters on the draft policy, Alastair Morrison, said he did not agree that the land owner oroccupier should be responsible to pay the water rates when they had been encouraged to fence races to keep cattle out of them, ‘‘also theymaintain the races and in most cases they have had to find another source of water for their stock, install anew reticulation system and, in my case, shift water races because others still wanted them only to find out a year later that they have changed their minds and shut the water race off completely, leaving me thousands of dollars out of pocket’’. ‘‘I thinkthe people that still want the open race system should pay extra for the service, this would encourage them to look for other ways to provide stock water. Asitstands at the moment, the owner of asmall lifestyle block has as muchsay as alarge land owner whenitcomes to closing arace.’’ He said he did not agree with the idea of leaving races open because of their ecological values as they were not natural water ways and the quality of water was questionable. Mr Morrison said leaving races open for flood control did not make any sense as in heavy rain debris was washed into races and blocked culverts, adding to flooding problems. Mr Morrison said there shouldbeprovision in the plans for a group of people who needed stock water to get together to have their own community groundwatersourced scheme rather than having stock races going across the district. 2200570 <strong>Ashburton</strong> October 16, 17, 18, 21, 22 &23 LPG Refills &Deliveries • Domestic • Commercial • Industrial LPG Deliveries from the Rangitata to the Rakaia – From the foothills to the sea. ARTHUR CATES LIMITED LPG Refills at: 26 McNALLYSTREET, RIVERSIDE INDUSTRIAL PARK,ASHBURTON TEL 308 5397 www.arthurcates.co.nz 2205293
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