How Kāpiti ‘got ready’ in 2024
3 Jan 2025, 9:30 AM
It takes a village… to prepare for and respond effectively to emergencies! Time and time again, we see that communities are best placed to look after each other when the worst happens.
That’s why Council and WREMO (Wellington Region Emergency Management) works with you to practice how you’d respond to an earthquake or weather-related disaster. Good preparation makes it more likely that our families, friends, neighbours, and loved ones will be safe if the worst happens. These small peacetime steps have big positives in and after a disaster.
In a major emergency, official responders need to prioritise the most urgent issues, so it is likely that for the first few days, you’ll need to help each other. A community emergency hub is a place where you and your neighbours can go to help each other in a major emergency. We have twelve in Kāpiti. They’re located at community facilities and some schools and can be opened by keyholders living in the local area.
In 2024, Kāpiti made big strides in the community preparedness space. Wellington Regional Management Office community resilience and recovery co-ordinator Renée Corlett sent through a list of some of the fabulous work of our community in 2024:
- Community response practices at Reikorangi Hall and Raumati South School hubs.
- The grand opening of our newest community emergency hub at Grace Hall on Tongariro Street.
- Faster, safer tsunami evacuation workshops for South Kāpiti.
- A great preparedness session with Ngā Hapū O Ōtaki kaumātua, including a "build a bog" emergency sanitation activity that brought lots of laughs.
- Paekākāriki over 65s meetup with an incredible attendance of 70 people.
- ShakeOut at Waikanae School, with age-appropriate earthquake planning for each class. That’s almost 500 students going home to tell whānau about preparedness.
- Our very first emergency preparedness workshop for NGOs.
- Amazing work by residents of Parkwoods/Woodland, Coastal Villas, Kāpiti Village, and Sneddon Village to build resilience in their village.
- Household earthquake planning sessions hosted by 21 community groups over the year. If you would like a (free) guest speaker for your group, Renée would love to come along!
- Reikorangi Hall renovation is complete making it the fanciest community emergency hub/wedding venue in the Wellington region, as Renee (now Mrs Santos!) shows - pictured here taking yet another opportunity to promote community hubs!
