When Cyclone Gabrielle cut off Hauraki coastal communities for up to 15 days, the state was nowhere to be found. Roads collapsed. Civil defence couldn't get through. Formal emergency services couldn't reach whānau who needed dialysis, vital medication, and kai. Communities that had been asking for emergency equipment for three years were still waiting.

So wāhine Māori kaimahi and whānau got on with it.

Denise Messiter, CEO at Te Whāriki, was among those who raised the alarm nationally during Cyclone Gabrielle, telling media that communities on the Coromandel Peninsula remained completely cut off, with no power, minimal road access, and no communication from authorities. "We need to know that our rural Māori communities in all the areas impacted are at the forefront of the response," she said at the time, "because we know from long experience that they will bear the brunt of it now and when the State of Emergency is over."

That warning was not heeded then. What followed was exactly what had been anticipated.

"It began because they did nothing. I mean, seriously, absolutely nothing. We did our own emergency management planning." That is how one kaimahi described what happened when Cyclone Gabrielle arrived. It wasn't a surprise. These communities had already lived through Cyclone Hale and a series of severe weather events before Gabrielle. They had been telling civil defence what they needed. They had submitted lists. They had advocated at the local, regional, and national levels. And when the storm hit, the resources still weren't there.

What was there, were the networks already built during COVID-19. Tangata whenua services across Hauraki had established coordination groups to support their communities. As Gabrielle approached, those groups reactivated quickly. "We just woke it up," said one kaimahi, "and we had the resources that we had there, so we could get things in place quickly."

In one community, two coordination centres were needed because flooding split the north end from the south. Whānau were hiking across slips to reach people who had been cut off. There were people who needed to dialyse. There were kāinga without power for ten days. There were whānau washing in the creek in winter because there was nothing else.

And still the state didn't come.

So wāhine kaimahi and whānau mobilised fishers and boaties and activated the Blue Highway, ancestral coastal routes along the Firth of Thames (Tīkapa Moana) to Manaia, moving kai, water, fuel, and medical supplies by boat to communities the state had left behind. "Blue highways are boats on the water. They reach our people when there is nothing else. Yeah, blue highways. I love that term," said one participant in the Hauraki Māori Weathering Cyclone Gabrielle research. When the roads close, the moana remains open. That knowledge, held by fishers, boaties, and local knowledge holders across Hauraki, is what kept many people alive.

It has never been formally documented in this way. Until now.

Te Whāriki Manawāhine Research has been awarded funding through Coastal People: Southern Skies (CPSS) to lead Whakatō Te Mauri Ora: Indigenous-led Coastal Disaster Resilience Pathways in Hauraki, a two-year Mana Wāhine-led research programme running from April 2026 to August 2028. The project is led by Principal Investigator Paora Moyle (Senior Research Fellow and Director of Research, Te Whāriki Manawāhine o Hauraki).

CPSS is a National Centre of Research Excellence funded through the New Zealand Government's Endeavour Fund.

The research will document one defined section of the Blue Highway, focusing on the coastal routes from the Firth of Thames to Manaia. Researchers will work with fishers, boaties, and local knowledge holders who moved supplies during Gabrielle to record historical and contemporary routes, landing points, tides, tohu, and seasonal knowledge. This section of the Blue Highway functioned as critical infrastructure during the storm. This mapping will help better coordinate future emergency responses when roads are cut and communities are isolated.

The project will operate from three strategic coastal bases, including Te Kura o te Kauwaeranga in Thames, which wāhine and kaimahi turned into an emergency base for displaced whānau when civil defence failed to provide one. Wāhine and rangatahi who led the Gabrielle response will convene six wānanga over two years to document effective response systems, share learning with other marae, identify gaps, and co-create practical preparedness tools.

"This research puts Hauraki wāhine leaders at the centre of what we know about disaster resilience in our rohe," said Paora Moyle. "It is not just documenting what happened during Cyclone Gabrielle. It is creating a record of knowledge systems that have always been here and must be part of how we prepare for what is coming. The climate is not going to get easier. The state is not going to get faster. What we are doing is making sure the knowledge that protected our whānau during Gabrielle is never invisible again."

Mana Wāhine methodology centres those most impacted by housing instability and climate disaster, including takatāpui, rainbow, trans, disabled, gang-affiliated whānau, and state survivor communities. Their leadership during Gabrielle was not incidental. It was the response. This project recognises that and builds on it.

The project builds on two prior research programmes led by Te Whāriki Manawāhine o Hauraki, both grounded in the Pū-Rā-Ka-Ū framework developed by Paora Moyle's research. Hauraki Māori Weathering Cyclone Gabrielle documented how wāhine-led systems protected whānau when state responses failed, and the profound institutional racism whānau encountered when they sought help. He Whare, He Taonga demonstrated that wāhine carry disproportionate burdens from colonial violence, housing instability, and climate-related disasters across Hauraki, and that this burden shapes how communities experience and recover from disaster.

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