Westport must look to future, not past

New Zealand’s natural disaster insurance scheme, administered by the Earthquake Commission, is world leading.

The scheme is designed to complement private insurance cover (increasingly sum insured rather than replacement) and, wherever possible, to put the customer back in a similar position to that which existed prior to the natural disaster.

After natural disasters occur, it has been normal political practice to reassure the affected community that life will get back to ‘‘normal’’ as soon as possible. Essentially, the message has been ‘‘normal transmission will be resumed’’.

This thinking changed after the second

Christchurch earthquake in February 2011. The question then became, should rebuilding occur in the same locations? Why rebuild in areas of multiple natural hazard risk, particularly if the vulnerability to those hazards was increasing?

Christchurch City had known for years before the Darfield earthquake that many areas of the city were at appreciable flood risk, but although the liquefaction risk was also recognised, the city had not experienced a liquefaction event since European settlement. Shovelling silt and sand, like snow, became the new normal.

Central Government also understood that to maintain insurability, both from the private insurers and reinsurers, the risk profile of Christchurch needed to be reduced.The high level of residential insurance cover in Canterbury provided an opportunity to withdraw from the areas at highest risk at the least economic cost.

The new normal that Christchurch found itself in included a residential red zone, which was the first major withdrawal from a hazard-prone residential area in New Zealand.

Over 7000 properties, housing more than 20,000 people, were sold to the government. The government then claimed back the insurance monies. While it would have involved a significantly lower social cost to have withdrawn from these areas before disaster struck, natural disasters do provide an opportunity to evaluate whether rebuilding or withdrawal is the best use of financial resources, including insurance monies.

So, we find ourselves in the midst of yet another natural disaster, this time in Westport.

Before embarking on a programme of returning the residential properties to how they were before the disaster, we need to look at the cost in perpetuity of protecting these properties and what the wider natural hazardscape looks like.

Are the flood-damaged properties also vulnerable to liquefaction and lateral spreading under seismic shaking? Are the properties also vulnerable to sea level rise? Tsunami? Storm surge? Are the floods getting worse with climate change?

With natural disaster insurance cover currently available it is important to take stock and, rather than attempting to recreate the past, consider what Westport could look like in the future.

Confining rivers inevitably leads to creating bigger disasters. If we are to have a more resilient future, we need to start adapting to the existing natural hazard threats now, many of which are dynamic.

The natural disaster in Westport cannot be undone. What Westport can do, however, is to take this opportunity to start on a journey of adaptation. This might result in defending against nature, but it is more likely to result in living with nature and becoming more resilient. Like Christchurch.

Nick Rogers QSO held the lead advisory role to the government on the red-zoning of Christchurch in 2011.