Two members of the Emergency Management Bay of Plenty team are moving to a national level after being added to the New Zealand Emergency Management Team.

Andrea Thompson, Emergency Management Bay of Plenty executive assistant and Lee Hazlewood, Emergency Management Bay of Plenty principal advisor, have joined the team.

EMAT is a new capability in the emergency management system, and their establishment is the Government's response to the recommendations to establish a ‘fly-in team' in the Technical Advisory Group's report on better responses to natural disasters and other emergencies.

The name reflects the purpose and structure of the team which is to provide specialist capability enhancement to assist and support the affected incident controller and their incident management team manage an emergency.

National Emergency Management Agency deputy chief executive Gary Knowles announced the appointment of 11 new EMAT members which brings the total to 46.

'The Emergency Management Assistance Team provides a national cadre of specially trained experienced emergency managers who can go wherever needed at very short notice to assist and support local teams to manage emergencies across all hazards and risks,” says Gary.

'EMAT members are selected from a range of organisations and undergo a complex selection process before completing a residential training programme to ensure they are ready for the most challenging of emergency situations.

'I am delighted with the exceptional calibre of this intake. Since the launch of the team in 2019 we have seen EMAT deploy to a range of responses from adverse weather events through to the wider Covid-19 response effort.”

As well as Andrea and Lee, the new EMAT members are:

• Alma Shaw, Ministry of Social Development
• Andrea Thompson, Emergency Management Bay of Plenty
• Jason Hill, Fire and Emergency New Zealand
• Jason Leppens, Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment
• Kate Hill, Fire and Emergency New Zealand
• Lee Hazlewood, Emergency Management Bay of Plenty
• Lucinda Swatton, Nelson-Tasman Civil Defence Emergency Management Group
• Nico Fournier, GNS Science
• Paul Manson, Fire and Emergency New Zealand
• Richard Hardie, Department of Internal Affairs
• Ross Panioa, Te Puni Kōkiri

Since the establishment of EMAT, members have been deployed to provide assistance to a number of emergency responses including, the Franz Josef flooding of Dec 2019, Southland flooding of Feb 2020 and to the National Crisis Management Centre and Queenstown to support the Covid-19 response.