UPDATE: Westport: Get ready Go campaign

UPDATE: Westport: Get Ready Go campaign

A West Coast Emergency Management exercise was recently held to test emergency preparedness in a mock flooding situation in Westport. The exercise is part of the ongoing work to improve Westport's resilience following the 2021 and 2022 floods and builds on the work of the Westport Flood: Evacuation Response Plan, which was funded by Resilient Westport.

We put together a wrap of the exercise, a volunteer’s story and other useful information for an article in the Westport News on Friday 24 July 2026, and we are sharing that here.

More about Exercise Whakatahi:

West Coast Emergency Management manager Claire Brown says: “We talked to the people of Westport and surrounds in recent months about what they can do to be prepared in an emergency, so this exercise was us doing our part in making sure we are ready too.

“The scenario we practiced was severe flooding predicted by Metservice to generate a 1-in-100-year flood event in the Buller River. This included the mock declaring of a state of emergency and planning, coordinating and preparing for a full evacuation of Westport.

“We had the teams in place in an activated Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) representing welfare, safety, intelligence, planning, operations, public information and logistics – all reporting to and overseen by the EOC Controller of the day.

“We also had representatives of the WCRC’s Flood Impact Risk Specialist Team (FIRST), Metservice, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Police, Fire (FENZ), St John, Te Whatu Ora (Health NZ), Buller Electricity and NGO’s either there in person or contributing via video link throughout the exercise.

“The exercise assessed emergency management systems, communications, decision-making, evacuation processes and inter-agency coordination. It also helped identify opportunities to further strengthen emergency plans and response arrangements,” says Ms Brown.