Message for parents from the Air Base

Dear Parents and Caregivers,

Please see below a message from Group Captain Andy Scott, Base Commander of RNZAF Base Auckland following today’s events.

Added to Andy’s message, a heartfelt thank you to you all for your understanding and support this afternoon, in what we know was a very difficult situation.

As always, your children were amazing and took the afternoon in their stride. We are so proud of them all.

Kind regards,

Kia Ora Whenuapai Parents

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we worked through the incident at Whenuapai Air Base on Friday afternoon.

I appreciate that it was troubling to receive the messages of lockdown of the school and to be asked to stay away as the event unfolded, so I wanted to provide you some background as to what occurs if we have an incident on Base.

The priority for us is always the safety of our people and for us at RNZAF Base Auckland we treat the school as a part of our Base given how close we are. In incidents like this we prioritise getting hold of the school to inform them what is going on and to make sure the children are safe and at the start we may not always have the full picture.

As we get more information about the nature of the issue and risks, we work with the school and emergency services to see what is the best course of action for our children. Sometimes that maybe to stay in lockdown or it could be to evacuate, but each situation is different and so we always need to make sure we put the safety of our children first.

As we saw on Friday afternoon that saw both the lockdown and then a new pick up routine worked through where the Base staff supported the school to move children safely to alternate pickup sites.

I know you will all join me in thanking the teachers, the support staff and our amazing kids on doing such an awesome job on Friday. They did us all proud as it was certainly not the end to term we envisaged but it was great to see everyone pulling together in an strange situation.

Thank you all again for your support and understanding.

Kind regards

Andy

Base Commander RNZAF Base Auckland.