Tāmaki Makaurau flood response put disabled at risk, advocate says

Sunday, 29 January 2023

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown speak to media after a severe weather event caused flooding across the Auckland region.

The emergency response in Tāmaki Makaurau to Friday’s flooding put disabled people at risk, an advocate says.

Lawyer Dr Huhana Hickey (Ngāti Tāhinga, Whakatōhea) says she knows a tetraplegic man who had to be evacuated from his home.

'But then no hospital would take him, no rest homes would take him. So finally the police took him in and kept him there for the night,” she said.

“No services were available… they should've been set up when we were given flood warnings that day.'

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Hickey said people in the disability community had now offered the man a place to stay.

'We've got our disability services getting his equipment sorted, all of that because our emergency services were not available,” she said.

Disability advocate and lawyer Huhana Hickey says Auckland mayor Wayne Brown was “missing in action” and sign language interpreters should've been used in Friday’s emergency broadcast.

“The community got together, there's a group of us, and we are fielding information back and forth, finding out who's available to do what and helping our community ourselves because we can't rely on the mayor.'

Hickey was critical of Auckland mayor Wayne Brown, who she called 'missing in action'.

A state of emergency was announced 10.18pm on Friday. National leader Christopher Luxon and Auckland councillor Josephine Bartley criticised Brown for not declaring it earlier.

'He was dithering around, and we weren't expecting him to go lifting buckets. We expected him to lead,” Hickey said.

Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown was criticised for the time it took for him to declare a state of emergency in response to widespread flooding on Friday.

“Lead by making sure Civil Defence were doing their job and that the essential services were able to be available.'

Hickey said there were also no sign language interpreters on live television on Friday, which placed the deaf community at risk.

'I spent the night helping the deaf community through typing the information they needed because some of them were flooded,” she said.

'Some of them didn't know where to go, they didn't know how to contact emergency services. All that information should be up ready to go..'

Hickey said wheelchair vehicles needed to be available urgently, and disabled people needed to know where shelters were and if they were accessible.

“We have no wheelchair taxis that will run, and so we have no way of getting people to shelters in an emergency,” she said.

'We actually need Civil Defence to have the interpreters there and to have disability access information available for everyone to know what to do.'

An Auckland Emergency Management spokesperson said providing information and access to the disability community is a priority.

'The 11pm media conference following the declaration of a state of emergency on Friday was organised at very short notice, which meant we were unable to organise a sign language interpreter,” they said.

They added that further updates were being livestreamed with a sign language interpreter.

The spokesperson said the nature of Friday’s weather events meant many of the venues Auckland Emergency Management would normally use as evacuation centres were flooded.

'As a result, we were very limited in the venues we were able to stand up and these were mobilised at very short notice. We encourage Aucklanders to follow our social media accounts for the latest information.'

Auckland mayor Wayne Brown was reached for comment but did not respond.