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Like much of New Zealand, the Gisborne-Tairāwhiti region faces a series of potential natural hazards such as flooding, landslides, earthquakes and tsunami. While we can sometimes have advanced warning of the storms that cause flooding and landslides. This is not the case for earthquakes and tsunami that can occur without warning.

Gisborne District Council has updated the Tsunami Evacuation Areas using the latest Ministry of Civil Defence Emergency Management Guidelines. The new evacuation areas are significantly different from the previous zones and as a consequence the analysis behind the new evacuation zones has been extensively reviewed before their release.

A tsunami is a series of waves typically caused by earthquakes but can also be caused by submarine landslides or undersea volcanic eruptions. But as the waves travel towards land, they build up to higher and higher heights as the depth of the ocean decreases. The speed of tsunami waves depends on ocean depth rather than the distance from the source of the wave. Tsunami waves may travel as fast as jet planes over deep waters, only slowing down when reaching shallow waters.

Red shows the highest risk and is the first place people should evacuate from in all types of tsunami warnings (i.e. natural or official) generated near and far. Orange indicates the area that should be evacuated in most if not all distant and regional tsunami threats. Yellow indicates an inundation generated from an 8.9 earthquake in the Hikurangi Subduction Zone.