Tsunami sirens in New Zealand

While there are tsunami warning sirens throughout New Zealand, the country does not have a national tsunami warning siren system. Some individual areas have tsunami warning sirens which are activated by local Civil Defence Emergency Management groups. Tsunami sirens must follow a technical standard by the National Emergency Management Agency, which standardises the siren signals, their meanings and the "requirements for their operation". Tsunami warnings are also issued over radio and to mobile phones via Emergency Mobile Alert and on TV and social media.

Areas that are prone to local-source tsunami (caused by nearby earthquakes) such as the Wellington Region and Napier do not have tsunami sirens, or have few tsunami sirens, due to the potential danger they pose to the public. These issues are that local-source tsunami waves could arrive before the sirens are activated and that earthquake shaking could cause the sirens to stop working. These issues could lead residents to wait for sirens that will not come, which happened after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.

As of December 2013, over 90 per cent of New Zealand's tsunami sirens are on the east coast.

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