It was a disaster scenario Emergency Co-ordination Centre public information management team members were training for at the Otago Regional Council yesterday.
Emergency Management Otago group public information manager Erica Andrews said the scenario also included impassable roads and bridges, and outages of communications, electricity and water across Otago.
She said during such times, communication and leadership were important so people would know what was going on, where they could go to evacuate, as well as other pertinent safety and survival information.
The team members were being trained to provide quality, in-depth information in a way that kept people calm at a time when they were most distressed.
"Part of our responsibility when disaster strikes is to have media stand-ups — we’ve seen that in Auckland and other places.
"It’s important that the team know how to pull that together," she said.
"We ask all our communities to be prepared for disasters ... we also need to be prepared.
"And to do that, we need to train and we need to practise."
The training session was one of many that had been held at centres throughout Otago, she said.
