When Canterbury was rocked by the massive 7.1 shake early in September, much of the focus in the initial stages was on Christchurch. No-one was paying any attention to the impact on the small town of Kaiapoi some 20 kilometres north.
That's when the Waimakariri District Council called in The Primrose Group to help.
Not only specialists in media and communications, we are the ONLY public relations practitioners with offices in Christchurch and Auckland who are also experienced Civil Defence Public Information Managers, and it showed.
A daily update was sent to all six thousand residents. The media was engaged. Most importantly, the community was effectively informed.
That's because our focus, first and foremost, was on ensuring the right messages went out in a timely and appropriate way to the affected community. It wasn't just about writing a media release or manning the phones, necessary though that is, it was down-to-earth, on the ground communication.
Our Mayor wasn't just standing in front of the cameras, he was in the township talking to affected ratepayers, reassuring them his council was doing its best to restore services.
We backed those reassurances with evidence of the work being done in the trenches quite literally as staff struggled to restore water and sewerage systems.
We encouraged the council to make it clear to its ratepayers they would 'get thru' but that it would take time and they needed to be patient. And they were, because with our help, the local authority was able to take them along with them each step of the way.
What helped was that we knew the area, we knew the people (we live and work here) and we knew (to an extent) how they were feeling because we had been affected by the earthquake too. But more importantly we are all experienced in providing communications support during civil defence emergencies.
The Primrose Group not only provides media training to Civil Defence personnel, we have previously taken similar roles during civil defence alerts and emergencies, around major flood events and landslides.
We understand and recognise the requirements of the Civil Defence and Emergency Management Act 2002, and why we needed to adhere to them. Why it is important, for example, for Civil Defence to be the ones driving communications, rather than individual local authorities in isolation.
That put us in the unique position of being able to tailor our strategic advice and undertake appropriate crisis and risk management.
For when it comes to situations like this you really do need people you know you can trust because they know what they’re doing and who just get on with it.
OUR BLOODIEST DAY
