Richard Moore: Excuse me while I tilt at windmills

We have our tsunami worries but the delights of summer remind us why we love living along the coast. Here a competitor in the Mount Monster leaps off theBlowhole to start the swim leg of the multi-discipline gut buster. Photo/Richard Moore.

It seems there could be a bit of Don Quixote in me - despite a distinct lack of Spanish blood flowing through my body.

For like the legendary Don, who jousted with windmills believing them giants, I'm always prepared to have a tilt at issues that most would regard as being unwinnable and, therefore, not worth the fight.

The way I look at it, if you don't fight the good fight then those who would wish to do things unopposed, or get away with not doing the right thing, will always win.

And that is how a lot of the troubles we find ourselves in have come about, by too many people accepting mediocrity and believing oft-spoke lines that - purely because they continue to be repeated without being challenged - have a way of being accepted as fact.

Politicians are masters at it and the thing that rankles with me is they think they can fool all the people all the time by doing it.

For example, when John Key tells us that his Government has a mandate to sell state assets because they were voted in with that being part of National's 2011 election platform, he is only sort of right.

He is right in that they were voted in and he is right in saying asset sales were part of his programme but, if he were truly honest, Key would admit that most people voted National because they couldn't stand the idea of Labour getting back into power at that time.

Another subject where you can hear a line being trotted out is the matter of emergency sirens along our coast.

Last week I wrote on the lack of action from Tauranga City Council over the matter of emergency sirens and ruffled a couple of feathers that resulted in letters to the paper. By the way, I want to thank all those people who emailed me on the issue backing up my statements.

One letter I won't comment on, other than to say perhaps the author of the epistle may need to re-read what I said.

The second letter, however, needs a rebuttal as it incorporates the aforementioned oft-spoken lines being taken as fact.

It was from city council emergency management chief Paul Baunton and he claimed my words are "going to undermine potentially life-saving messages that people need to know about tsunami warnings".

He went on: "The most devastating tsunami to hit the Bay would be generated by a massive earthquake or undersea landslip at the Kermadec Trench. Geologists tell us this event would most certainly be felt in Tauranga as a very severe earthquake."

And: "Tauranga City Council, CDEM Group and NZ Police want people to understand that a severe earthquake is one of the most reliable warning signs that a tsunami might be on the way."

He finished with: "Mr Moore does the community a disservice by publicly scoffing at the science behind this planning without checking his facts."

After such criticism, I should be chastened but - having checked my facts again - I reckon you readers should note this. In a confidential report to Civil Defence from Geological and Nuclear Sciences (GNS), updated in 2013, it states:

"Two circumstances have been identified in which a local tsunami may be generated, but the earthquake that caused it is not strongly felt.

"One is if the earthquake is a 'tsunami earthquake' - a special class of very shallow earthquake on the subduction interface that does not cause strong shaking; two earthquakes near Gisborne in 1947 were probably of this type and both caused tsunami.

"The other is of a subduction earthquake on the southern Kermadec Trench; in this case the shaking may not be strongly felt along the Coromandel and Northland coasts because of seismic attenuation in the offshore Taupo Volcanic Zone."

So that tends to cast doubt on the claim that such a quake would "most certainly be felt in Tauranga as a very severe earthquake".

I agree with the basic premise of self-evacuation being pushed by authorities, that if you do feel an earthquake go for higher ground. It is sensible.

But, and it is a big but, that tiny piece of advice should not be all our authorities provide to us to save us from a wall of water. And, despite all the protestations and histrionics, at the moment that seems to be it.

We need evacuation plans, signposted routes away from the danger zones, information and detailed booklets in our schools, more exit roads from Papamoa and a siren warning system to make us aware something is amiss.

Above all, we need a council that will work with the community to solve issues and deal with concerns.

Surely we are not asking too much there?

Tauranga's public servants owe the 35,000 citizens along the coastal belt more consideration than they have so far been shown.

And I hope bureaucrats will stop downplaying the risks faced, or the ease with which things could be achieved if only there was the will.

They can try to shout down, or ignore, those of us who have the temerity to shine the spotlight on the issue. That doesn't alter the fact we have a major problem.

I'll leave you with a great quote from Spanish author Javier Pascual Salcedo: "Bureaucracy is the art of making the possible impossible."

Merry Christmas to all.

Richard Moore is an award-winning Western Bay journalist and photographer.

Richard@richardmoore.com