Tauranga City Council has released its external review into the Mount Maunganui landslide, finding that the hazard was known but never addressed.
It says the failure was not the fault of one person, but of a system that allowed an identified risk to life to remain unmanaged.
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Dr Tom Robinson, Senior Lecturer in Disaster Risk and Resilience, University of Canterbury, comments:
“The review into the deadly landslide on Mauao has clearly shown that this event was entirely foreseeable and potentially preventable. Since 1999, numerous reports had highlighted not just the potential for a landslide during heavy rain, but also the potential for a mass fatality event. Options to manage and mitigate the risk were also clearly identified, but never actioned.
“Part of the problem appears to be the level of understanding of which teams or organisations were ultimately responsible for making decisions about this risk. This finding is not new – time and again after major disasters in New Zealand, independent reports have identified similar failings, including the most recent reviews into Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023.
“The problem is, the systems we have are so heavily focused on responding to and recovering from disasters once they have happened, rather than reducing the chance of them happening in the first place. Since 2010, out of the costs central government has incurred associated with natural hazards, just 3% has been spent on risk reduction.
“In this context, it’s easy to see how the need to act on a known risk fell between the cracks. Once again, it has been tragically highlighted to us that we need to better invest in risk reduction and systems that clearly set out how best to manage the risks we face, when to act on those risks, and importantly, who is responsible for taking – and paying for – that action.”
Conflict of interest: The expert has declared they have no conflict of interest.
Dr Lauren Vinnell, Senior Lecturer, Doctoral Co-Supervisor, School of Psychology, Massey University, comments:
“It’s good to see the review released today into the deadly Mauao landslide earlier this year, although as always I extend my sympathies to those still grieving their loved ones.
“The lessons and recommendations are going to be useful for New Zealand more broadly. In particular, we have two main challenges to grapple with. The first is how we view “risk” – we know this word means different things to different people (including different experts) and that the approach we take to deciding whether a risk is okay or not could be improved.
“Second, we need a much more deliberate, transparent, and coordinated approach to land-use planning. Much of the country is exposed to some kind of natural hazard and often the decisions around how to manage these sit across multiple parts of the system. While we can’t change what happened at the Mount, it is vital that the lessons identified from this tragedy are put into practice.”
Conflict of interest: “No conflicts of interest to declare.”