Editorial: Hats off to the stormbusters

Workers clean up the mess left behind from Cyclone Cook

It was a great but short storm, for which the aftermath could have been much more severe had it not been for the efforts of dozens of emergency service personnel, contracting crews, and volunteers.

That was Thursday night's tempest, which some called ex-Cyclone Cook, whatever that means.

To hell with that, it WAS a Cyclone, and those hats which were not blown off by it should all be doffed to all of those who turned out, in many cases abandoning any prospect of a weekend with the family at Easter, to come to the rescue of those around them in the community.

Fire crews, who, fortunately, had almost no fires to contend with, lines staff working with the power supply, arborists and their crews, roading contractors, and, of course, the volunteers from next door or down the road.

It's difficult to put the event in context, most will say they'd never seen wind quite like it.

But as a night-time event, we find some comparison in the statistics of the Fire Service, which had 75 calls in less than five hours up to 11.30pm on Thursday, not to mention the 50 it had the next day, numbers possibly unequalled since the flash flooding that inundated the CBD of Napier, and to a certain extent Hastings, in January 2002.

The two incidents - 2002 and 2017 - highlight the variation of the weather event, making it thus an achievement and a half that whatever Mother Nature threw at us, human nature was still able to cope.

Somewhat miraculously, no one was seriously hurt, in neither the event nor the clean-up that followed, and will continue for some time.