The West Coast Regional Council is continuing with its campaign to have Bailey bridges kept local permanently – despite a brush-off from NZTA.
NZTA stores the temporary bridge units at Burnham near Christchurch and sends them around the country as needed in emergencies, such as the floods that devastated Hawke’s Bay in Cyclone Gabrielle.
But the West Coast regional transport committee wanted some bridges stored west of the Alps, so they could be deployed more swiftly when disaster struck.
Trucking the bridge units from Burnham to the West Coast could be problematic after an earthquake, especially the one predicted to rupture the Alpine Fault, councillors argued.
But NZTA has turned down their initial request to locate a bridge or two on the Coast.
At a council meeting this week, transport committee chair Peter Ewen described the Agency’s response as “nonsense”.
“The argument that [the bridges] have to be kept over there because of rust here…it’s a precious argument. We had a contractor in Stillwater prepared to store them in a good location, free of charge.”
The council voted to tackle NZTA again about the need to keep some bridge units in the region. Councillor Allan Birchfield was the one dissenting voice — arguing that the Coast atmosphere was “not good” and the bridges were better kept in one central location.
Speaking to LDR after the meeting, Ewen said the idea that Bailey bridges would rust away on the West Coast was “rubbish”. In decades past, the Ministry of Works had stored Bailey bridges up and down the Coast without damage, he said.
“But the main argument is that if we have an event here and the [mountain] passes are out, we’ll be three days waiting before they get across from Burnham.”
There were multiple bridges on State Highway 6 running the length of the Coast and the loss of just one in a flood could create mayhem for civil defence, he warned.
On the stretch between Greymouth and Hokitika alone, there were five bridges, some of them built in the 1940s or 50s and never designed to take today’s heavy trucks, Ewen said.
“They’re starting to show signs of failing – like the one over New River at Camerons – the piles are starting to subside.”
The highway was a West Coast lifeline in emergencies, Ewen said.
“If there’s one connection we have to protect, it’s the one between Greymouth with the hospital and Hokitika with the airport, and we can’t afford to wait three days in a disaster.”
He and others would raise the Bailey bridge issue again with NZTA at a meeting next week in the hope it would reconsider, he said.
Such persistence had paid off recently with the news that the West Coast was about to gain four bulk fuel storage tanks for use in civil defence emergencies, Ewen said.
“We’ve been asking the government for that for about ten years – finally it’s happened.”
Diesel for diggers, bulldozers and trucks would be crucial for restoring access and saving lives after a major earthquake on the coast, the council has argued.
West Coast Emergency Management head Claire Brown says the new fuel tanks are coming from Hawke’s Bay, where they were installed after the cyclone.
“We… were advised some of the tanks were no longer needed so there’s no cost for the tanks themselves but relocating them was the responsibility of local [civil defence] groups.”
West Coast health authorities and councils had helped decide where to put the tanks and how to maintain fuel stocks, Brown said.
The tanks will be located across Buller and Westland and at Te Nikau Hospital in Greymouth, and civil defence authorities will be able to commandeer the diesel in an emergency.
Two of the tanks could hold 15,000 litres of diesel each; one could store 5000 litres and the fourth would hold 2500 litres, Brown said.
By Lois Williams of Local Democracy Reporting
Local Democracy Reporting is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air
