The media briefing room inside the 'Beehive Bunker', properly known as the National Crisis Management Centre. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
At the heart of many bad spy or disaster movies is some sort of secret command bunker, an absurdly high-tech place, where the hero (or villain) can decide the next plotpoint or meet for the climax.
These fantasy lairs are as silly as the crises they command, but the general idea is true.
The USA has a 'Situation Room' under the White House, the UK crisis group has the fiction-worthy name 'COBRA', but their crises are observed from the prosaic 'National Situation Centre'.
Australia's 'National Situation Room' is an aspect of their National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). New Zealand also has a NEMA, as well as a crisis management centre.
For a tour of New Zealand's National Crisis Management Centre (NCMC, aka 'The Beehive Bunker'), RNZ joined Minister for Emergency Management Mark Mitchell, NEMA national controller Charlie Blanch and acting CDEM director Stefan Michie.
The bunker was accessed via an unremarkable door in the basement of the Beehive. It wasn't hidden, it said what it was on the door, but it looked unimpressive - more Le Carré than Clancy.
In the Beehive Bunker, properly known as the National Crisis Management Centre. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
Inside the door was a huge sign and another set of stairs, leading even further underground.
The walls showed photos of historical disasters. At the bottom, in a reception area, there ere small glass cabinets with historical disaster memorabilia.
They were all reminders of just how hazard-prone this country was - floods, fires, earthquakes, volcanos and slips.
Mitchell pointed out that he had only been the minister in charge about 18 months and, in that time, New Zealand had 14 local states of emergency.
The most recent nationally declared emergency was Cyclone Gabrielle, but the national centre gets involved in helping out with local crises as well.
"We're not waiting until we have a national emergency," Mitchell said. "NEMA is proactive and involved in supporting local states of emergency, which actually gives you good practice as well, I think.
"It gives you muscle memory and you develop those relationships, you understand what the challenges are in the different regions and areas that have been hit."
In the Beehive Bunker, properly known as the National Crisis Management Centre. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
NEMA has charted a hazardscape that outlines just how busy CDEM and NEMA have been.
Since 2015, each of New Zealand's regions has had at least one local state of emergency. The lowest are Wellington and the Chathams with one.
At the other end of the scale are Canterbury with 17, West Coast 11 and Otago 10. The totals are 81 local and two national states of emergency for a total of 512 days.
On average, that's one day of emergency per week.
The regularity and severity appeared to be increasing over time as well. The previous nine years totalled just 110 days of declared emergency, of which 79 were the Christchurch earthquakes of 2010/11.
The other seven years managed 11 days between them.
By comparison, every year since 2015 has had at least 24 days of declared emergency.
In the Beehive Bunker, properly known as the National Crisis Management Centre. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
Reminded of our unfortunate history, RNZ then headed into a much larger space than met the eye from the outside - a command room of sorts, with an elevated control booth and, in a sweeping arc below, clusters of office desks.
Without the elevated bridge or the curving outside wall filled with projected screens, it could have been a slightly tired call centre.
Every cluster of desks had a sign above it, indicating its role - logistics, welfare and intelligence etc.
At the entry to the space, racks of colour-coded bibs were named for the same groups, called CIMS functions. Clearly delineated and identified roles were part of New Zealand's approach to what they call Co-ordinated Incident Management Systems.
Branch explained how the colour-coded CIMS groups worked.
"When we're doing contingency planning, it's really important that operations has got a voice, that iwi liaison is present, that intelligence function is talking about long term trends...
"Planning will have a representative from all of those [CIMS] functions, drawing it together to produce that contingency plan or the next action plan."
At the local council level, Civil Defence teams might sometimes multi-task or swap roles, but at the NCMC, these were specialist roles undertaken by experts.
"Anyone working in logistics understands how logistics works," he said. "They can come in and they can apply it here.
"If we send them to a [local] CDEM group, they can go and do the logistics role. The focus may be slightly different - a little bit more operational the further down you go - but they're talking the same language, they're wearing the same coloured vest in this space."
Another good reason for such clearly defined roles was the capacity for chaos. During Cyclone Gabriel, the NCMC "had about 120 staff down here on the day shift and they were drawn from across central government agencies".
Charlie Blanch (left) the NEMA national controller and acting CDEM director Stefan Michie in the Beehive Bunker. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
When asked what it meant to be NEMA's national controller during a crisis, Blanch said: "In an emergency, I'll lead and co-ordinate the response of the civil defence emergency management (CDEM) groups, all of our partner agencies in a state of national emergency.
"I'll exercise the emergency powers that a national controller holds."
While this could be a centre for directing activities, the whole CDEM model was clearly not built on central dominance.
New Zealand has a strong tradition of local experience and capacity, and no lack of volunteers. What is often needed is oversight, information and coordination - local emergencies help the sector practice just that.
"Those local councils and regional councils know their local communities, know their hazard scape," Blunt said. "Our job is to support them.
"There's a big focus in gaining what we call situational awareness, understanding what's going on 'on the ground' with first responders, emergency services, as well as the 16 CDEM groups.
"We use a number of tools to do that. Mapping is a really key part of that."
That's one reason there were big screens projected on the walls.
The regional councils had a lot of mapping capacity, with the help of LINZ and other agencies, and all of that information, with more from (for example) Waka Kotahi and science groups, became essential, as the NCMC helped guide a clear path through a crisis.
Not all the incoming information came from government. The screens also allowed media monitoring, Blanch said.
"You'll see people down here moving between what they've got in front of them on the [big] screens and the individual pieces of work they're doing [on their own screens] to also sharing pieces of information that everybody in the centre needs to be aware of on the big screens."
The media was also looked after down in the bunker.
Along the endlessly curving corridor was a small media briefing room. Very small - enough space for resource pooling (maybe one TV camera, a still photographer and 2-3 journalists).
There was also - in the line of sight of anyone speaking - an unmissable large poster demonstrating how people should stand in relation to the deaf sign interpreter that would also feature on screen.
Deaf sign interpretation reminders in the media briefing room inside the Beehive Bunker. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
The media briefing room was not the only thing down the corridor.
The NCMC was much larger than I had imagined. It was definitely not a small corner hidey-hole.
It is, in fact, a huge concrete ring under the Beehive, with office space, breakout rooms, a large cafeteria, bunk rooms, quiet spaces and a media-briefing area. There were also separate spaces for some of the agencies and functions.
It is a truism of the ridiculously shaped Beehive that the smallest and most cramped spaces are up at the top - where the prime minister and cabinet offices are situated.
The further down the building you went and the less senior the ministers occupying it, the more space their floor had.
Down at sub-basement level where the NCMC was, it was huge compared to the cramped confines of the prime minister's office.
In the Beehive Bunker, properly known as the National Crisis Management Centre. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
Opened in 1969, the space had all the brutalist chic you might expect from a building with endlessly curving walls of concrete. The absence of windows leaned toward the latter.
The CNCM folk seemed excited at the prospect of moving into a new purpose-built facility as part of the new parliament offices under construction behind Parliament House.
Natural light would be welcomed, but so would the fact the new, wooden building would be one of the safest in the country.
Emergency Management Minister Mark Mitchell was upbeat about the future, even when agreeing that the number of natural disasters was only likely to increase.
"I just think actually we're in a really good space, as a country," he said. "I think that we've got outstanding people right through every level of emergency management and civil defence response.
"We've got world class first responders, and we've got communities that always stand up and react, as well.
"We are in a good space."
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