40 years in Civil Defence: Dealing with people in crisis 'the hardest part'

A Civil Defence controller who has led the emergency response for numerous floods and fires in the top of the South Island says its the people that have kept him involved for the last four decades.

Jim Frater, an alternate group controller for Nelson Tasman Civil Defence, has received a long service award for his 40 years contribution to emergency management.

Frater first volunteered for Civil Defence in Richmond in 1984. He took up a job as a rates clerk, before becoming an administration officer at the Richmond Borough Council (now Tasman District Council) in the late 1980s, with civil defence one of his responsibilities.

"It was very basic, we basically ran on the back of a cigarette packet as far as finance goes. The councils gave us very little money and they just considered that civil defence was something that happened, that volunteers came out of the woodwork and took care of everything and to be fair, that's pretty well how it operated back in those days."

He was able to manage his day job alongside the Civil Defence work for the most part, with the support of a part-time staff member.

By 1994, Frater had been appointed a group controller. Based inside the operations centre during an emergency, the group controller dons a white vest for easy identification and is responsible for the overall leadership of the local level response to an event, which includes directing and coordinating the use of personnel, materials and other resources.

Frater has often said it is the easiest job of the lot. He is required to make a lot of decisions, but he has a lot of support to do so.

"I might need a helicopter survey but I don't need to work out where the helicopter is going to come from, I just expect someone to organise the helicopter to do reconnaissance and come back and tell us what the the results are."

One of the first major events was a widespread flooding across Nelson and Tasman in January 1986, and floods have been a theme in the decades since.

"You get lots of damage to property and roads, but it is the effect on people that is the greatest in my mind and trying to minimise the effects on them and get them back into their properties as soon as you can.

"It's dealing with people in crisis, that's the hardest part."

Floods and fires in the top of the South Island

One of the biggest events he has led the response for was the December 2011 floods in Nelson, where there were more than 200 slips across the region and hundreds of homes had to be evacuated due to landslides and flooding.

Parts of Golden Bay were isolated so supplies had to be dropped in by helicopter and Cable Bay was cut-off by a major slip.

A state of emergency was declared in mid-December and lasted for several weeks.

Frater recalled doing 16-hour days during the emergency and not once stepping foot inside his office. At the time, his day job was the property services manager for Tasman District Council.

He said the intelligence, particularly around rainfall and river levels, had vastly improved since he first became involved with Civil Defence.

"We probably had our fingers crossed a lot 40-odd years ago, these days we can be reasonably confident when something is happening, how it is going to happen, but then you never know if a hillside is going to fall down."

The Pigeon Valley wildfire in 2019 was a different event for Frater, who was by then used to storms and flooding.

Sparked by an agricultural contractor working in a dry, stony paddock, the fire tore across more than 2000 hectares of forestry in Tasman and took firefighters a month to bring under control.

The entire town of Wakefield had to be evacuated, with 3000 residents forced to leave their homes and Frater said it was for good reason, given the size of the "massive fire".

"The scale of it was absolutely incredible, the number of roads we had to cordon off, the amount of people that were actually involved on the ground.

"There would be a meeting once a day with four people who would agree on the strategy, which would then filter down to everyone, it was amazing."

Dealing with a civil defence emergency

As an alternate group controller, Frater shares the role with a number of others in the region. When he is rostered on, a duty officer will call if it looks like a weather event is unfolding and keep him up to date with information from the hydrology team and other officials.

"Ninety-nine times out of 100, it starts to escalate and then the weather changes."

But if it worsens - the call is made to stand up an emergency operations centre.

"We do seem to have a lot more weather events, there seems to be a lot more land slippage around ... the one of course we don't want is the alpine fault and it's going to happen sometime but I would be perfectly happy if it doesn't occur in my lifetime."

Frater said people needed to understand they could be without help, power or cellphone reception for several days.

"Fuel availability is going to be extremely restricted, the roads won't necessarily be passable, the hospital will be seriously affected, the port may be unusable, the airport is on reclaimed land so you become aware of the issues."

He said Civil Defence in Nelson and Tasman now had a number of staff, excellent training opportunities, bases in Murchison, Tākaka and Lake Rotoiti and a local team, New Zealand Response Team 2 (NZ-RT2), made up of more than 20 volunteers who train regularly to meet national Urban Search and Rescue standards.

"Those guys are amazing, they train hard, they know what they are doing."

Outside of Civil Defence, Frater has been heavily involved in the community. He has coached rugby, badminton and cricket and been the president and chairperson of a number of sports clubs and other organisations.

When he turned 65 eight years ago, he decided to retire from those roles but continue his work with Civil Defence, which he fits in around travelling with his partner Jan, singing at country and folk music festivals and enjoying the country's cycle trails on an e-bike.

What kept him involved was the "amazing group of people" he worked alongside and the need to serve his community.

Several members of NZ-RT2 were also recognised for their long service to Civil Defence. Bryn Stephenson, Aaron Mytton, Julian Malcolm, Jason Monopoli, Jennifer Chaddock and Karen Cargill received awards for 10 years' service, while Ian Watts and Ken Connor were acknowledged for 20 years' service. Local controller Russell Ferens also received an award for 10 years' service in Lake Rotoiti.

Emergency management and recovery minister Mark Mitchell presented the awards at a service in Nelson on Thursday and said such volunteers were the backbone of New Zealand's Civil Defence and Emergency Management workforce.

"Without the contribution of these individuals, New Zealand communities would not be as well-prepared or as resilient as they are today."

He said the men and woman have voluntarily given their time, in some cases over decades, to serve their communities.

"They are our society's unsung heroes - those people who have, and will in the future, help many of us during emergency situations."

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