Dunedin City Council Civil Defence manager Neil Brown yesterday owned up to "dropping the ball" over one aspect of Sunday's tsunami alert.
Dunedin resident Rob Owens contacted the Otago Daily Times yesterday and said no information about the tsunami was posted on the council's civil defence emergency website until noon, after the wave had passed.
Mr Owens, who lives near the coast on low-lying land, said he was alerted to the "emergency" at 6.30am by his girlfriend's mother in Northland.
He rang the council and was told to check the website and listen to the radio.
"I tuned into one of the radio stations specified . . . and heard nothing in relation to the tsunami until late morning."
"I would have expected the council's civil defence public notification to be much better."
Mr Brown agreed a tsunami warning should have been posted on the council website.
"I dropped the ball on that one."
Civil defence was changing its system, he said, so media releases in future would automatically go to the council's in-house web team "and they will develop a system for taking that on to the website more quickly than it happened this time".
Mr Brown sent a Dunedin alert to media at 12.38am, which the ODT understands was not broadcast by radio stations until after 6am.
"Had there been a risk to people of a destructive tsunami that was becoming a civil defence issue, obviously we would have been a lot more proactive ensuring that the information was readily available."
New Zealand's tsunami alert was cancelled at 9am yesterday, but people in coastal areas were warned to be wary of sudden sea fluctuations. mark.price@odt.co.nz
