On November 14th New Zealand was struck by a large amount of horrifying earthquakes. This lead to tsunami warnings throughout the East Coast of New Zealand including Papamoa & Mount Maungnui, Tauranga.

At 2.05am a Civil Defense text message was sent to those who had signed up for alerts warning us to evacuate and move to higher ground. Now being 2am most people have their cellphones off, on silent and do not check them leaving them unknowingly in danger of a tsunami heading their way. Thankfully the threat was lifted and we in Papamoa and Mount Maunganui are safe however many have now woken in the morning with the horrifying reality that they wouldn't of known what was happening until it was to late.

This leads me to the reason for this petition and that Papamoa & Mount Maunganui NEEDS tsunami sirens.
I believed that we had sirens in place in Papamoa East and that the fire station on Parton Rd would sound their sirens in a case of a tsunami threat but this morning I learnt that I was wrong and they have no control over the siren in a event of a tsunami and it would not go off.

Our communities needs a loud and effective wake up call to alert us of the threats of a possibly tsunami heading our way. We live in an area where we extremely exposed to beaches and flat land but thankfully not far behind is hills which we could easily reach if we were alerted, prepared and quick to react to warnings but we NEED PROPER WARNINGS!

Yes, if a earth quake was to hit Tauranga then that would be a clear indication that we are in trouble and need to move quickly but in Nov 14th case, we had no earth quakes, only a simple text message and this IS NOT ENOUGH!

Please sign this petition, lets make Papamoa and Mount Maunganui safer communities, lets get the warnings that we need and deserve!