Papua New Guinea’s Defence Minister and minister responsible for the National Disaster Centre Dr Billy Joseph confirmed today that the government — with coordinated support from all stakeholder agencies and development partners — was responding appropriately to the natural disasters that has hit many parts of the country.

The National Disaster Center (NDC) is the national coordinating agency and is working with provincial governments and district development authorities (DDAs) as well as the Department of Works and Highways, PNG Defence Force and other stakeholders to coordinate and respond promptly.

The East Sepik provincial earthquake on Sunday left at least three dead and more than 1000 homes collapsed.

• READ MORE: Three people reported dead, 1000 homes destroyed by PNG earthquake

The US Geological Survey said it was magnitude 6.9 and just over 40 km deep.

King tides and heavy flooding
The minister confirmed that about 10 provinces are getting the necessary assistance from the National Disaster Center, including Goroka/EHP which was not included in the initial report provided to his office.

PNG Defence Force troops are working closely with the Simbu Provincial Government and Gumine DDA and their respective leaderships as Simbu was one of the worst affected provinces.

7 people missing off the coast of New Ireland Province
Nine people boarded a banana boat at Kavieng for Emirau Island but did not make it due to heavy weather conditions when the boat capsized.

Two of the young men swam to the island to look for help while seven others made a makeshift raft and floated awaiting assistance.

“As of today, seven people are still missing and our search is still active — if we don’t find them after 72 hours, we will declare them lost and the search will be discontinued,” Minister Joseph said.

The Australian Defence Force has provided a C27 aircraft to conduct low aerial surveillance of the subject areas.

A PNGDF Navy Patrol Boat has also been deployed to the area but no sightings have been reported.

The Search and Rescue operations are being coordinated by the National Maritime Safety Authority with oversight provided by the PNG Defence Force.

East Sepik Province earthquake
NDC is working very closely with the leaders of East Sepik, including the provincial government, to ensure much needed help reach the people that need it.

An emergency allocation of K200,000 (about NZ$90,000) has been made available for food, water, shelter and medicines etc as seen appropriate by the Provincial Disaster Committee.

It is at their disposal. A commercial helicopter is now in Wewak to assist in the relief operations and the PNDF military helicopter will join shortly.

“We are also mobilising support from our bilateral partners to assist but the challenge is now for the Provincial Disaster Center to provide reports to NDC so we define and coordinate what kind of emergency assistance is required,” Minister Joseph said.

Minister Joseph further warned Papua New Guineans to take precautions and not take risks, especially at sea, as the country’s emergency services are stretched and rescue efforts may not happen in time.

Miriam Zarriga is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

Aotearoa New Zealand’s new NZ SeaRise website, designed to show how the country’s coastline will be affected by rising sea levels and land subsidence, has been hit by a cyber attack.

Project co-leader and Victoria University of Wellington earth sciences Professor Tim Naish said the website went live this morning at 5am, and since then it had been getting 10,000 hits per second which had ”just killed” the website.

”We’re trying to get it back up and running,” he said.

• READ MORE:  Climate change: sea levels rising twice as fast as thought in New Zealand
• Other climate change reports
• NZ SeaRise’s online tool — available here from 5am, today May 2.

”The guess is that these are anti-climate change people or the Russians — who knows.

”We don’t know for sure, but we think they’re using an autobot. They’re coming from an overseas IP address.

”It’s just hitting us with thousands of hits and our website can’t cope.”

It was frustrating because local government mayors were being asked to comment on the website, but were unable to because it was inaccessible at the moment, he said.

Frustrating for residents
It was also frustrating for residents interested in what was going to happen on their own land.

The NZ SeaRise website shows location-specific sea level rise projections to the year 2300, for every 2km of the coast of New Zealand.

Climate change and warming temperatures are causing sea levels to rise by 3.5mm a year on average, but until now, the levels did not take into account local vertical land movements.

Professor Naish said continuous small and large seismic events were adding up to cause subsidence in many parts of New Zealand, and the new projections showed the annual rate of sea level rise could double.

Project co-leader and GNS Science associate professor Richard Levy said the team had connected vertical land movement data with climate-driven sea level rise to provide locally-relevant sea level projections.

“Property owners, councils, infrastructure providers and others need to know how sea level will change in the coming decades so that they can consider how risks associated with flooding, erosion and rising groundwater will shift,” he said.

”We have estimated future sea levels for 7434 sites around our coastline. The largest increases in sea level will occur along the southeast North Island along the Wairarapa coast.

Land subsidence rates are high
”Here, land subsidence rates are high and sea level could rise by well over 1.5m by 2100 if we follow the least optimistic climate change scenario.

”In contrast, land is rising near Pikowai, in the Bay of Plenty, and uplift rates may keep pace with climate change-driven sea level rise, causing a small fall in sea level if we follow the most optimistic climate scenario.”

Dunedin and Invercargill were not likely to be any closer to inundation by the sea than had already been predicted, because ground movement in the South was ”quite stable”, he said.

Based on present international emissions reduction policies, global sea levels were expected to have risen about 0.6m by 2100, but for large parts of New Zealand that would double to about 1.2m because of ongoing land subsidence.

”We know that global sea-level rise of 25cm-30cm by 2060 is baked in and unavoidable regardless of our future emissions pathway, but what may be a real surprise to people is that for many of our most populated regions, such as Auckland and Wellington, this unavoidable rise is happening faster than we thought.”

Vertical land movements mean sea level changes might happen 20-30 years sooner than previously expected.

For many parts of New Zealand’s coast, 30cm of sea-level rise is a threshold for extreme flooding, above which the 100-year coastal storm becomes an annual event.

Climate change adaptation options
Joint Otago Regional and Dunedin City Councils’ South Dunedin Future group programme manager Jonathan Rowe welcomed the new information and said it would feed into many aspects of the councils’ work, particularly that relating to the South Dunedin programme which was considering climate change adaptation options.

ORC operations general manager Gavin Palmer said the information would also feed into flood protection planning to mitigate the impacts of sea level rise in other parts of coastal Otago, such as the Clutha Delta and the Taieri Plain.

Rowe said for South Dunedin, the new data confirmed previous guidance, that further sea level rise of 24cm-35cm was predicted by 2050-60, and up to 112cm by 2100, depending on global emissions.

A climate change adaptation plan would be presented to both councils in June, he said.

Climate Change Minister James Shaw said the findings were “sobering” and the government’s first plan to cut emissions in every part of New Zealand, would be published later this month.

• The website appeared to be accessed normally later today with an earlier notice saying “The NZ SeaRise maps are down temporarily for maintenance” having been dropped.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. It was first published on the Otago Daily Times website.

A new study shows rising sea levels in the Marshall Islands will endanger 40 percent of buildings in the capital Majuro, with 96 percent of the city likely to flood frequently.

The study, “Adapting to Rising Sea Levels in Marshall Islands”, is compiled by the Marshall Islands government and the World Bank.

It provides visual projections and adaptation options to assist the Marshalls in tackling rising sea levels and inundation over the next 100 years.

• READ MORE: Other COP26 reports

As COP26 begins in Glasgow, the new visualisations demonstrate the existential threat the Marshall Islands faces.

If existing sea level rise trends continue, the country will confront a series of increasingly costly adaptation choices to protect essential infrastructure.

World Bank senior municipal engineer and the leader of the study, Artessa Saldivar-Sali, said these visual models give insights that have not been available before.

She said these will be critical for decision-makers to understand the potential benefits of adaptation options, such as sea walls, nature-based solutions and land raising.

Saldivar-Sali said the modelling paints a clear picture of the need for significant investment in adaptation for, and by, atoll nations like Marshall Islands.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

A local Indonesian community leader has praised the co-publication of a climate change and disasters edition of Pacific Journalism Review launched at Auckland University of Technology on the eve of the Indonesian Festival on campus last weekend.

The journal featured research papers on Indonesia, New Zealand and the Pacific, including a comparative study between tidal flooding in the Central Java city of Semarang with an impact on more than 75,000 people and the devastation of Cyclone Winston in Fiji.

The journal also included a study on disaster survival narratives in the Indonesian media.

READ MORE: Pacific Journalism Review climate and disasters edition

Maman Baboe of the Auckland Indonesian Community launched the publication, saying he looked forward to further partnerships.

This edition was a collaboration between the Centre for Southeast Asian Social Studies (CESASS) at the Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta and the Pacific Media Centre in AUT’s School of Communication Studies

The University of the South Pacific in Fiji also contributed.

Lester Finch, director of AUT’s Indonesian Centre, said he strongly supported the PMC for doing such important work with the journal.

Opened by ambassador
He also highlighted how AUT was the home for the only Indonesian centre at a New Zealand university, and it was also hosting the annual Auckland Indonesian Festival, opened by Ambassador Tantowi Yahya on Saturday.

PMC director Professor David Robie, who is also editor of PJR, said this was the first joint edition of a media journal between Indonesia and New Zealand.

He thanked his team at AUT and in Indonesia and Fiji for putting in “enormous time and effort” for making the edition possible.

• Gallery: Climate change, disasters spark Indonesian-NZ research publication