A meeting between the village councils, stakeholders and the National Disaster Management Office (NDMO) was held today funded by the New Zealand MFAT and NZ’s Emergency Management Agency NEMA.
“NDMO is happy to host the Village Councils and other stakeholders in a post-cyclone season meeting. These meetings are important for NDMO to provide training to VCs and have open discussions regarding Village Disaster Plans and the different types of disasters we could face here in Niue”, said the Head of NDMO Chief Timothy Wilson.
The Village Councils were also invited to provide updates to their village disaster plans and to discuss the issues, challenges and solutions to their plans.
The day’s programme included an overview presentation by Director of the Met Office Rossy Mitiepo about the cyclone season that just finished last month. Mrs Mitiepo told BCN News that there were twelve cyclones predicted for the Pacific Region and two for Niue but only ten systems were observed but it was a quiet tropical cyclone season.
“It was a quiet TC Season for us.
The observed number of systems for the season was 10. Out of these 10, there were 6 tropical cyclones. One cyclone reached Category 4 as a severe cyclone.
All systems were above 1,000 kilometres and located further away from Niue. This means, no cyclones posed any direct threat for Niue this cyclone season 2021-2022”.
There were other presentations including one on Fire Safety and Fire Extinguisher training by Senior Fire Officer EJ Strickland, and a presentation from the Alofi South VC about their Covid 19 Committee preparedness plan.
The final presentation was on updating the village councils on the Tsunami sirens and alert levels by the Chief of Police Tim Wilson.
Chief Tim Wilson told BCN news that “these meetings are important for NDMO to provide training to VCs and have open discussions regarding Village Disaster Plans and the different types of disasters we could face here in Niue. We thank New Zealand’s NZ Emergency Management Agency and MFAT for their support and funding and thank Niue Crash Fire, Niue Met Service and the COVID Committee for their assistance and participation.”