We still don’t know how much damage Cyclone Gabrielle has caused us.
The unprecedented scale of the disaster has impacted vast tracks of NZ and damaged communication lines in a way that makes this disaster unique in an age of 24/7 connection.
Many people are addicted to social media, losing that addiction at the same time as losing everything else is going to cause a level of distress that compounds misery.
We are still desperately in rescue mode and the full cost hasn’t even begun but already experts are talking tens of billions in damage, many more lives lost and years to rebuild.
As all of this occurs, there is also a possibility of another Cyclone before April.
Oh and we had a 6.3 Earthquake overnight.
This all after Covid.
Our resilience and our stoicism is being tested like never before, and yet everywhere you look there are New Zealanders of every type rushing to help their fellow citizens in any way they can.
It is that twist of human nature that in the worst of times, the nature of our altruism shines.
From the first responders, to the Marae, to the Civil Defence leadership, to the political leaders, to the Community Halls, to our RSA’s, to our volunteers and to everyone donating money for relief funds, it really does highlight who we are as a people that so many of our first responses to a disaster like this is seeking to help others.
This disaster has hit everyone evenly, the poor and the rich and that generates the political will to do something meaningful on Climate Change.
As we struggle to fight what is still a rescue mission, our kindness and bonds of common human experience are more important than ever before.
Kia kaha New Zealand!
Kia kaha!
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“Cyclone Gabrielle has exposed enormous structural frailties and inequalities while highlighting Kiwi’s stoicism and community kindness”
The last two times that happened, chch eq & covid, that didn’t last, society got worse, and govt was confirmed as even more useless than we thought.
Part of the problem is that disinformation campaigns are run by politicians and climate change denying business hiring dodgy disinformation firms to spread disinformation!
Like the Panama papers that put a spotlight on how big business, lawyers and politicians did not pay the taxes that they expected the average Joe and less wealthy taxpayers to pay, it is the same with climate change policy that is alarmingly absent from politicians.
Revealed: the hacking and disinformation team meddling in elections
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/15/revealed-disinformation-team-jorge-claim-meddling-elections-tal-hanan
“In more than six hours of secretly recorded meetings, Hanan and his team spoke of how they could gather intelligence on rivals, including by using hacking techniques to access Gmail and Telegram accounts. They boasted of planting material in legitimate news outlets, which are then amplified by the Aims bot-management software.
Much of their strategy appeared to revolve around disrupting or sabotaging rival campaigns: the team even claimed to have sent a sex toy delivered via Amazon to the home of a politician, with the aim of giving his wife the false impression he was having an affair.
The methods and techniques described by Team Jorge raise new challenges for big tech platforms, which have for years struggled to prevent nefarious actors spreading falsehoods or breaching the security on their platforms. Evidence of a global private market in disinformation aimed at elections will also ring alarm bells for democracies around the world.”
Big Oil PR Firms Reject Invite to Hearing on Climate Disinformation
https://truthout.org/articles/big-oil-pr-firms-reject-invite-to-hearing-on-climate-disinformation/
when you’re a 100 percent wrong you have no choice but deception
Next: a volcano?
Auckland or Taupo (minor), pick one?
Or Rotorua, of Bay of Plenty or…
Other issues to consider. NZ’s woeful research and data quality. Apparently much of the scenarios are being done on old data aka old versions of how much permeable services there are, not updated.
Then there is the lack of interest in expertise in the construction/engineering/transport industries and the amount of high profile frauds with people who have fake qualifications being embraced by NZ governments and councils.
Woke led NZ engineering firms get more money now by getting government contracts by being woke and virtue signalling or corruption. No lessons learnt. CTV building https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/124243373/collapse-revisiting-the-odd-case-of-gerald-shirtcliff-the-fake-ctv-engineer
fake qualifications seems to be even more prevalent in engineering circles now – only a $5000 fine https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/467061/student-engineer-signed-off-dozens-of-projects-while-posing-as-structural-expert)
Council wastewater contracts to cake decorators
Westland District Council manager awarded cake decorator’s firm $7 million contract to build sewage plant
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/90384093/westland-district-council-awards-cake-decorators-firm-7-million-contract-to-build-sewage-plant
Fraudsters reaching the highest levels of government management effortlessly.
Fraudster Joanne Harrison’s hidden history: The life and crimes of a million-dollar conwoman
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/117926188/fraudster-joanne-harrisons-hidden-history-the-life-and-crimes-of-a-milliondollar-conwoman
No wonder NZ is facing such disasters, so much money seems to be siphoned off and lack of integrity of people working in the fields.
NZ is not alone in having fraudulent personal hired in important roles .One way to combat this is to have a well,resourced group of people to expose these fraudsters. Unfortunately the reporters of old are getting fewer as newspapers shrink their staff and tv is reduced to 7 Sharp or the Project. While I often do not agree with Martyn s take on issues at least he put news out there that hold politicians and business leaders to account for their actions.
Having lived through the CHCH earthquake I know following the weather disaster there will be many acts of generosity and kindness but unfortunately there will be those that take advantage of the situation to do bad things .
To the good people WELL DONE to the bad people just stop and think
NZ is alone in having huge deaths in the CTV building, an enquiry but failed to be bothered to prosecute anybody – even though one of the engineers faked his degree and also the engineering firm failed to notice or supervise him properly.
Likewise the engineering student convicted on 38 counts of fraud recently, gets a $5000 fine and already set up the website for more work. The two engineering firms who failed to check her qualifications and used her illegally, get off scott free (like the CTV building engineers) and also are not named. Profits before People!
So there is an ongoing lack of transparency as well as a lack of justice in NZ.
And certainly a lack of interest in saving lives and livelihoods in those that get caught up in failed construction from this type of fraud and indifference to qualification checks.
Meanwhile in woke land, police and wokesafe prosecute and fine over someone losing a finger (criminal charges in the case of 4 x burglar attacking the pensioner) and wokesafe file charges and hundreds of thousands in fines when a little NZ firm have a work place accident. (not against them being fined, but more the difference between the fake engineers and engineering firms using them, not being prosecuted and fined themselves).
Two tiered laws in NZ is part of the problem.
NZ doesn’t need more central bodies checking qualifications, employers, courts and immigration and those in charge need to do proper due diligence!
Too easy for migrants that offend to get their convictions unrecorded here – woke lawyers argue it might effect residency so they get to stay and offend further and harm more people with more crimes.
How is it beneficial to have more foreign fraudsters coming to NZ as a destination and setting up companies and working here?
It’s actually driving the honest migrants out, clogging up the visas with NZ being the Mecca to the criminally minded and crims able to prosper with undetected frauds here.
So bad that a recently arrived cake decorator, gets awarded a 7 million dollar sewage contract with corruption from other staff at the council. The NZ woke headline is she might be deported (as if this is a bad thing). HELL YES! The last thing NZ needs is more minimally waged cake decorators and the like, who put their name to infrastructure companies for massive profit and work with others being awarded corrupt government contracts in NZ! Yes that’s another house taken up, more justice costs for everyone else to pay.
Meanwhile in other countries – they don’t wait for the fraud to get worse, as soon as they detect fraudulent qualifications they deport from country shortly after! (Not 10+ years, millions in justice cost appeals, like NZ).
Finland deported unusually many foreigners last year, writes YLE
https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/17335-finland-deported-unusually-many-foreigners-last-year-writes-yle.html
NZ justice lap up deception, and fail to do any due diligence – foreign students flit back and forth in NZ.
Imposter doctor Yuvaraj Krishnan admits falsifying documents, lying to High Court
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/300720084/imposter-doctor-yuvaraj-krishnan-admits-falsifying-documents-lying-to-high-court.
Not just the courts. Kill a migrant with a migrant owned company – wokesafe don’t prosecute. ACC pays out with no levies paid, to overseas beneficiaries, the migrant company and site he works at, are not prosecuted or fined. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/illegally-working-overstayer-dies-on-the-job-acc-payment-made-to-widow-in-china/OWADEJMGCUYM36WLF6YNKUA2SE/
Our regulators are part of the problem in NZ – they are prosecuting others but seem to need to be prosecuted themselves as their culture is seriously impractical and illogical.
Whakaari / White Island: Finger pointed back at WorkSafe
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/457528/whakaari-white-island-finger-pointed-back-at-worksafe
The key now will be to pour as many people into the territory as possible, while continuing to allow foreigners to vote in “our” national elections. Genius, Jeebus.
One thing that stands out is the stupidity of eliminating the copper telephone connections. Now when the power goes out so does all communication. A huge step backwards fof civilisation.
D J S
Exactery.
There is still perfectly serviceable copper in the ground. This is why I bang on about the tensions between the technophobe (or luddite), and the technophile (who constantly opts for new technology just because they can)
Technophiles assume new technology is always better, and more reliable). This where technology drives people rather than people driving technology according to their wants and needs.
Previously we had telephone exchanges with their own backup generators linked using trunk cables and/or microwave. Had we retained them, we’d be better off at the moment. They could at least provide a backup service to the emergency services, hospitals, community centres and the old telephone boxes.
And the technophiles scream that telephone exchange equipment is no longer manufactured. Probably it isn’t because the technophiles have been hard at opting for new technology only – everything over VoIP using cellular and various other systems, all outside that perfectly serviceable copper in the ground. SFA redundancy. And that’s aside from the fact that in various ways, its potential for hacking is increased.
BY all means embrace the new technology where its useful and is people driven, NOT just for the sake of it or so that the technophiles can show us all how clever they are (often by reinventing the wheel).
Thee are countless examples. Banking, for example, may have all the latest bells and whistles which are great! But you’re stuffed in times such as these or when there’s insufficient bandwidth – even when it’s just because profit driven telcos haven’t invested enough in their networks
And is government now actually easier to deal with electronically? Not for a lot of people
I could go on
David Stone I kept my copper phone line, and didn’t have the final Chorus connection made when it was installed at a neighbour’s request, along our shared drive way, and I have been given a tough time by offspring for doing so. The Chorus box is stuck on the outside for me or anyone to have it completed in future, but I have a permanent telephone connection. Bloke next door, a fairly senior public servant has done likewise. Every now and then a foreign wee Chorus chappie turns up to try and discuss this with me, which I now decline to do. A few historical problems with the copper line, which my provider said could be Spark sabotage/ ineptness, but I manage ok.
We kept our copper going for as long as we could but they cut it off about 3 months ago.
D J S
David Stone Last time the Chorus worker came he told me I needed to “ future proof” by quitting the copper. His marketing jargon alone was enough to irritate me; it’s patronising, maybe more so from a juvenile immigrant, but as half of them are exploited themselves and not paid overtime etc, I just told him that the little box is just fine sitting where it is. For reasons I don’t understand, my offspring totally lost their land line with their Chorus installation, and other family now have problems with their landline, but have given up on Chorus as difficult to deal with.
Pedants say there is no such thing as common sense. Probably there isn’t, but there is sheer muppetry.
Economists, and often risk managers see their ‘craft’ as a science. I see it more of an emotion. And often an emotion that’s predominant among the socially inadequate.
That placement of the Transpower Hawkes Bay substation on a flood plane would be akin to putting the Haywards substation on the Petone foreshore. Especially when there was higher ground almost across the road.
But yea/nah.
And don’t get me started on the comms failures.
Not a lot of background research done on these people b4 employing them, NZ has a severe lack of professional leaders in Business, Local & National Governance, it’s all about celebrity status and who you know these day’s, nudge, nudge, wink, wink ?
I should probably qualified that contribution by saying ‘post modern, neoliberally-inclined economists and risk managers’.
Brad Olsen and David Eee Or spring to mind. Hopefully one day they’ll get some friends outside the Red Dwarf space craft
The usual suspects whingeing on…the political campaign required is to boot Rogernomics (in all its elements–legislative, hegemonistic, embedded contracting out, and fractured accountability lines, once and for all. So many different agencies with so many blurred responsibilities.
And…establish a fully publicly owned Works and Infrastructure Department.
Then get serious about dirty dairying.
“As all of this occurs, there is also a possibility of another Cyclone before April…This all after Covid.”
DURING Covid. The SARS2 pandemic is NOT over. Mid to long term consequences look ominous. No one who survived acute SARS1 infection lasted more than 15 years – destroyed their bodies. Letting SARS2 rip = evolutionary optimization.
” It is that twist of human nature that in the worst of times, the nature of our altruism shines.”
If only that could be translated against unregulated capitalism and all its human horrors !
These little islands of neoliberal austerity worship a system that causes just as much human misery and damage as mother nature on a daily basis and yet we accept the expendable casualties of that but come out in sympathy after a serious weather event.
I hope everyone knows that the NZDF can’t do two concurrent Operations at the same time be it Peacekeeping & HADR or two HADR Operations!
Currently all but 7 of the 8 RNZAF’s NH90’s are flying, 3 or 4 are currently in Napier atm. One on the Canterbury down Sth at the Campbell Is & one on the Fleet Support Ship wherever that is atm.
Compared to Bola in 87, the RNZAF had 14 Huey’s deployed & the now disbanded Andover’s flying into Airfields that other Fixed Wing Aircraft couldn’t get into.
The Army’s TF ie Reserve Forces still had a large foot print back in those days as most units back were close to 70%- 80% manned within their Peacetime CE Level, after 30yrs of Cuts to capability & personal the Reserves are basically a very hallowed out shell nowadays.
Napier in 87, still had a very sizeable Railway depot of Locomotives, Gangers/ Surface workers that were self deploying. But now disappeared like the Moa as like the MoW Depots.
The ADF are getting rid of their low hr NH90’s and they are capable of operating from the Ships without modification.
The USMC is having a Fire Sale of near new very low hr 24 Venom Huey’s, again design to be operated from Ships & Air deployed by C130J & they are also flogging off C130J’s as well.
If I was Andrew Little & Chippie, I would be serious be putting in a business case for additional Airframes for the RNZAF.
Remember Ron Mark got laugh at, by the left for proposing something like to this, along with 2 LPD’s for the Navy & increase the Army especially the Infantry, Engineers & the various Non Combat Arms Corps for both RF & Reserves because of the threat that CC prose to NZ and to the Sth Pacific.
Ron Mark must feel vindicated now, those muppets on the left and especially in the NZ Greens Party must feel like a bunch of stupid twats atm!
Bola was in March 1988.
less of this ‘nz community spirit’, big ups to all who helped and are helping….it’s what PEOPLE do in a disaster it’s not just a kiwi thing….we are not exceptional.
human interest stories are a distraction from covering real issues. and the constant corus of ‘business says x’ is wearing thin.
*100
We are not exceptional AT ALL.
It’s a shame it takes a disaster, or a war to make people behave as they should.
Incidentally @ gargarin and others: How do you reckon we might cope if there was a hot war.
My ‘reckons’ are that we’d probably lose. It’d take an eon to russle up enuff threads to make a uniform, and then we’d probably take several weeks for officials to decide where they could be made, before opting for some little atoll where we could outsource the manufacture to.
In other words, we’d be dithering with the bureaucracy weighing up options and doing cost benefit analyses before they’d manage to get over themselves and do something substantial.
The best thing about this disaster is that it has caused people to think, and wonder. (including pollies and ‘officials’)
Worst thing probably is that before they opt for the common sense road, as usual they’ll be pulling out the spin meisters and bullshit artists’ road.
(That’ll be the road in years to come where the the Mussilinis, Bolsanaros, a Seymore or two, will be seen hanging from the sparsely separated lamp posts)
I’d like to be around to watch, and I guess it’s faintly possible..
RNZ this morning an orchard owner asking for wage subsidies aka. Covid response. I wonder if this particular business owner was decrying the labour government spending too much money last week. I don’t begrudge this money being spent on the workers however this is hypocrisy from probably a NACT. supporter
(huge assumption maybe even a climate denier I know a step too far) who next week will probably be running down the government again and complaining about his taxes being used to support his business and workers. Also a side note the ACT leader chose to leave his constituents in the middle of a national emergency to politic in Christchurch. Did the cyclone not reach Epsom. If this doesn’t tell you what Seymour stands for nothing will.
I don’t wanna pay commie taxes until something happens then it’s hands out for the sociamalistical bail out money….juz sayin juz sayin