sent lines rescue teams to T\u0101wharanui peninsula.<\/a><\/p>\nCall logs show police took two hours and 49 minutes to get their crew there.<\/p>\n
Fire and Emergency took just an hour and four minutes.<\/p>\n
Once police alerted Fire and Emergency at 7.51pm, Manning\u2019s crew took seven minutes to set off. A quarter of an hour later, police were still discussing deploying their team.<\/p>\n
As they drove to the peninsula an hour north from Auckland, Manning said they were told to stand down.<\/p>\n
\u201cPolice have put some messages across the shared channel … stating that they will be the lead agency for the event and that they were going to try and mobilise the police search and rescue team … and we should stand down from the call.\u201d<\/p>\n
The police told RNZ their log showed their search and rescue (SAR) co-ordinator advising Fire and Emergency at 8.03pm to \u201cstand down if not deploying\u201d.<\/p>\n
At 8.04pm the co-ordinator advised \u201cpolice leading. Police ropes team will deploy\u201d.<\/p>\n
Manning said a Fire and Emergency duty commander also told them to stand down.<\/p>\n
His response? \u201cAbsolutely not … the woman is still trapped on the side of the cliff and is far from being rescued.\u201d<\/p>\n
Abseil down, hoist up<\/p>\n
Manning\u2019s six-person lines rescue team got to the carpark at the peninsula road-end at 8.55pm.<\/p>\n
This was still about half an hour\u2019s walk away from the cliff top through locked gates.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to appreciate, mate this is a pretty time-critical rescue,\u201d Manning said. \u201cThis lady had been on the side of the cliff now for about two hours exposed to the elements and I needed to get my team forward to effect the rescue.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was not until over an hour later, at 10.10pm, that the police rescue van got to the carpark. The team had only two lines rescuers among its seven members.<\/p>\n
At 10.18pm the Fire and Emergency team was waiting to abseil down to the woman.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was howling a gale,\u201d Manning said. \u201cShe was wet because her and her husband had been enveloped by the tide at one stage.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was on a 50m cliff, approximately 20m from the top.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her phone had helped pinpoint her position.<\/p>\n
Several volunteer firefighters and three non-lines team police officers who had arrived between 8 and 8.30pm had found her first but they needed a specialist rescue crew.<\/p>\n
It was after 11 when the Fire and Emergency crew hoisted her up, getting her to the road end at 12.22am.<\/p>\n
The call log mentioned \u201conset of hypothermia\u201d but police said she did not need to go to hospital.<\/p>\n
Manning said they heard the next day from their communications centre that police said they might simply not tell Fire and Emergency at all about such jobs in future.<\/p>\n
The police told RNZ they had no record of this.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis comment does not reflect police\u2019s position.\u201d<\/p>\n
Considered chopper, launches, ropes<\/p>\n
RNZ asked Fire and Emergency and police for interviews but they instead issued statements.<\/p>\n
Fire and Emergency said its crews responded promptly and committed significant resources at T\u0101wharanui.<\/p>\n
It added that incidents could be complex, and police were the lead agency and responsible for requesting help from Fire and Emergency.<\/p>\n
Police said they led all \u201ccategory 1\u201d operations (the vast bulk of search-and-rescues). \u201cThis gives police the lead in determining what assets are tasked and forming the rescue operation,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n
They looked at sending a chopper but at 7.30pm the police Eagle helicopter said the weather was too bad for it to go. The Eagle is primarily a surveillance machine.<\/p>\n
They looked at sending the police patrol boat and also talked to the Coastguard but at 7.50pm the latter said conditions were \u201cnot great\u201d and it could not reach the woman.<\/p>\n
They alerted Fire and Emergency at 7.51pm, but then police co-ordinators determined they did not need the agency\u2019s help and \u201cthis was passed onto the Fire and Emergency lines team. The team advised they were going to continue on to the informant\u2019s location.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe SAR on-scene co-ordinator was happy to involve the Fire and Emergency ropes team once at the location, as although not required they were already there.\u201d<\/p>\n
This was all according to standard procedures, police said.<\/p>\n
But Manning questioned how police waiting so long to notify Fire and Emergency in the first place or trying to stand them down could be a good standard \u2013 he called it \u201ca choke point\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u2018Opportunities to improve\u2019<\/p>\n
Police told RNZ there might be opportunities to improve.<\/p>\n
They and Fire and Emergency had \u201ccommitted to meeting further to assess whether there are opportunities to improve inter-agency communications or clarity of communications when one agency is seeking to establish available resources as part of deployment planning\u201d.<\/p>\n
The record of events on March 23 showed police decided early on that it was not an advanced lines rescue \u2013 before a single officer or firefighter got to the cliff. They said Fire and Emergency acknowledged this.<\/p>\n
The woman\u2019s husband told them by phone at 7.46pm about being \u201cin good spirits, calm and well-equipped for the weather, has food and drink\u201d.<\/p>\n
Both Nicholls and Manning called for talks to sort it out.<\/p>\n
They said police should stay in charge and lead searches, but that when responders knew just where someone was, like at T\u0101wharanui, it was a rescue not a search, and Fire and Emergency specialist rescuers would often be there faster.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the old adage, it\u2019s better to be looking at capability than looking for capability at the expense of the person that is in distress,\u201d Nicholls said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all about the welfare of the victim at the end of the day, right?\u201d Manning said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter who does the job. The person needs to be rescued.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police waited for half an hour to alert Fire and Emergency when the incident call came in at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3019,12636,47753,7572,78,111,43,139,69,1118,1523,31341,21037,675,8998,196910,8527,8528,1354],"class_list":["post-377969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-clash","tag-cliff","tag-extremely","tag-firefighters","tag-in","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-over","tag-pennington","tag-phil","tag-police","tag-position","tag-precarious","tag-rescue","tag-trapped","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}