Kāpiti Coast evacuation route checker
Type an address to see the way out of the tsunami evacuation zone on foot, how far it is, and how long it would take. Then go and walk it, while there is time to do so calmly.
Independent tool — a guide only
Tsunami Check is not made by WREMO, Kāpiti Coast District Council or GNS Science. It is a personal project by a Kāpiti resident. The zones are the official ones, but the walking routes are my own suggestions and some will be wrong.
Always follow official advice. Check your route against the official WREMO Kāpiti tsunami maps. Where this tool and WREMO or the council differ, believe them.
This is a work in progress. Send feedback here.
Free, no login, no ads, and it stays that way. If it is useful to you, you can leave a tip towards hosting and keeping the data current.
Best used while out walking a route, not during an earthquake.
Start typing a street name or number and pick your address from the list. Every address on the Kāpiti Coast is held in this page, so what you type is matched on your device and never sent anywhere. Working out the walking route does send a start point to a public routing server — see privacy. You can also paste a latitude and longitude.
Guide only. This route is a suggestion from an independent tool, not an official evacuation route. Compare it with the WREMO map for your area and walk it yourself before you rely on it.
Shaded by ground height above sea level — how high the land is, not how high a wave would be.
Used by GNS to draw Kāpiti's yellow zone (Fisherman and Mana–Otaheke faults offshore, and the Hikurangi subduction zone)
Tested by GNS, but too small to change the zones
Other known active faults
Hikurangi is off the North Island's east coast: press all of New Zealand
to see it. Tap a line for its name and
what is known about it, or read more about the faults.
The lines are drawn at a regional scale — good for seeing where faults run, not for
telling whether one runs under a particular house.
Search an address above, or click anywhere on the map to check that spot.
Three zones, and they are not three grades of the same instruction. Which one applies depends on what warning you get — or whether you get one at all. Pick one to see it on the map.
Choose a colour above.
If an earthquake is long OR strong, leave all three zones immediately. Do not wait to be told. If you are not in a zone, stay where you are — that keeps the roads clear for the people who have to move. Where these numbers come from.
In a long or strong earthquake, do not open this page. Move inland or to higher ground immediately. The shaking is the warning.
This is an independent tool, to be used as a guide only. It is not an official evacuation plan. Kāpiti Coast District Council and WREMO publish the official tsunami evacuation zones, routes and safe locations, and those take precedence over anything shown here. Official maps: WREMO Kāpiti tsunami maps.
The shaded areas come from LiDAR ground-elevation survey data. They show how high the land is — nothing more. Height is not the same as safety: how far water travels inland depends on the size of the wave, the shape of the seabed and the land, and where the earthquake happens.
The distance shown is measured in a direct line. A real walking route will be longer, because streets bend and some ground cannot be crossed. The travel times allow for that, but they assume clear roads. After a large earthquake, roads on this coast may be damaged, and the ground beneath much of the coastal plain is the type that can liquefy.
Routes may cross private land, and this page cannot tell you whether you have any right to be there. Walking routes come from OpenStreetMap, which does not reliably record who owns what, where the fences and locked gates are, or which tracks are open to the public. A line drawn across a paddock, a golf course, a school field or someone's back section may be legally impassable, physically fenced, or both.
Before you rely on any route, walk it and find out. If it crosses private land, that is worth knowing now — and worth asking the owner about now — rather than discovering at a locked gate with minutes to spare. In a genuine emergency, getting to safety comes first; but a route you have already checked and agreed is one you can use without hesitating.
Deciding what to do is yours. This page exists to help you make that decision now, in your own time, rather than in the few minutes you may have.
Most of this page runs on your own device, but not all of it. What follows is what actually leaves your phone or computer, and where it goes.
Apart from the search count below, there are no analytics, no tracking scripts, no advertising, and no cookies set by this page.
Three outside services are needed for the page to work. Each is run by someone other than me, under their own privacy terms, and each is outside New Zealand.
If you would rather not send a start point to the routing server, you can still use the page — the zones, the elevation shading and the straight-line distances all work without it.
If you send feedback, what you write goes to me. Giving an email address is optional and only used to reply to you. I do not add anyone to a mailing list and I do not pass anything on. If you would rather not use the form, do not put anything in it you would not want me to read.
Under the Privacy Act 2020 you can ask what personal information I hold about you and ask for it to be corrected. In practice the only personal information I am likely to hold is a feedback message and, if you gave one, an email address. Ask through the feedback form or the contact details on the about page and I will tell you, or delete it.
This page is not run by the Kāpiti Coast District Council, WREMO, or any government agency. It is a personal project, made by Emile van der Merwe, a Kāpiti Coast resident.
A route you have walked once is a route you can follow in the dark, in the rain, with a child on your hip, without reading anything.
No name, no account, no email needed. If the route looked wrong, or a street is blocked, or a gate is locked, that is exactly what I need to know. What you were checking is filled in below so I can reproduce it — clear it if you would rather not send it.