Internal emails and texts have revealed tech issues contributing to chaos as Auckland officials scrambled to respond to January's unprecedented flooding.
The correspondence showed communication staff struggling to log in to Civil Defence's Twitter account and being unable to change its website to provide advice online in the early hours of the storm.
Meanwhile, the mayor was left struggling with tech issues on his iPad for nearly an hour as the flooding worsened through the night.
It comes after an independent review found systemic failures across the city's emergency management with a lack of assertive leadership from Mayor Wayne Brown.
Nearly a thousand pages of documents from the flooding response were released to 1News and other official information requestors last night.
Mayor's iPad troubles
At about 8.15pm on the night, the mayor's chief of staff Max Hardy sent an "urgent request" to IT after calls to the council's after-hours support line went unanswered.
"The mayors iPad has a tech issue tonight. Owing to the current Auckland Emergency (flooding) he does need it for working for communication purposes with executive leadership team and emergency management staff," he wrote.
"I am on standby with the iPad."
Around 20 minutes later, it emerged that the person on call for IT issues was themselves without power and also dealing with flooding.
A manager wrote: "The person I have on-call is currently dealing with a flooded home and power outages so I will get it diverted to another of the team who will be in touch with you imminently."
Shortly before 9pm, another IT staffer called the mayor's office to fix Brown's iPad. It appears the mayor's tablet computer was out of action for around an hour.
Between 8.30pm and 9pm, Fire and Emergency told authorities it had received over 1000 calls for help, with a request for the Defence Force to help firefighters. At the same time, police said they were "overwhelmed with the event", according to Mike Bush's official report released yesterday.
Civil Defence locked out of own Twitter, website
Authorities were castigated for lack of communication on the night of the flooding in the independent report.
Bush said Civil Defence's "public information managers appear to have been seriously overloaded" as the public watched streets flood.
As parts of Auckland flooded, emails and texts showed officials struggling with tech issues on their website and being locked out of their own Twitter account.
Six hours after the flooding began and two hours after the mayor declared an emergency, Auckland Emergency Management's website cheerfully displayed a green header on its homepage stating: "Emergency Status: No current emergency".
The Civil Defence website hadn't yet provided any new advice or acknowledged the flooding was occurring in the Auckland region.
Pressure ramped up on authorities after Brown declared the state of emergency and Transport Minister Michael Wood's intervention forced Waka Kotahi to keep communicating throughout the night.
Just after 11.30pm, a council public information manager wrote that they were fielding complaints from the prime minister's office over the page.
"Urgently need AEM website updated," the staffer wrote to a staffer in one text.
"Complaints from NEMA," they wrote in a follow-up text.
"Complaints from PM. Can you talk urgently."
The staffer responded: "I am updating now with the developer. On a call with them now."'
An independent review has slammed Auckland Council's response to the city's January flooding. (Source: Breakfast)
Earlier in the evening, a public information staffer struggled to unlock the council's Civil Defence Twitter account for over an hour, with unsuccessful attempts to secure a verification code.
"[Communications staff] struggled with the multiple websites and social media channels that had to be utilised and aligned, not all of which were under their direct control or ability to remediate," Bush wrote in his report.
"The Auckland Emergency Management Twitter account, for example, failed at a critical point in early public communications."
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