Civil Defence in New Zealand - A Short History

Ministry of Civil Defence 1990
New Zealand has always been vulnerable to devastation by natural forces. The effects of events such as the 1886 Tarawera eruoption, the 1931 Napier earthquake, the 1968 Wahine storm, and Cyclone Bola in 1988 have been widely felt. New Zealand's civil defence organization, which in its earliest form dates back to the1930s, has had the task of responding to this kind of emergency. It was not until 1959, however, that the establishment of the Ministry of Civil Defence formalised earlier more ad hoc attempts to deal with natural disasters...