Linda Hall: Whingers should leave staff alone

Flooding at Auckland Airport on January 27. Photo / Pamela Mills, Twitter

OPINION: Whingers please stop. Air New Zealand staff do not control the weather. No one does.

It’s not their fault an entire summer’s worth of rain fell on Auckland last Friday.

Yes, there was a heavy rain warning but what fell out of the sky took everyone by surprise.

The result was a disaster. Our biggest city was thoroughly thrashed by rain. Homes flooded, families were displaced, and sadly four lives were lost.

Photos started appearing on social media on Friday afternoon of water flowing through supermarkets, homes and Auckland Airport.

The airport had no choice but to close, halting international and national flights. Passengers were evacuated. It must have been frightening for all those involved.

But there was water flowing through the terminal. That’s a huge clue to how safe it was inside.

Then the whingers started.

Passengers approached Auckland Airport chief executive Carrie Hurihanganui, one saying: “I’m not going to attack anybody but my problem is the communication.”

Another said that they had to go “into an unsanitary area” and were " being forced to rebook our own seats that we already paid for”.

Linda Hall is the assistant editor at Hawke's Bay Today. Photo / Warren Buckland

I do understand that people were frustrated because they didn’t know what was happening. They didn’t know when they would be able to get on a flight, they didn’t know where they were going to sleep that night and they didn’t know when they were going to get home.

But the people complaining about the lack of information need to understand that just like them, Air NZ staff were dealing with something they had never had to deal with before.

We already knew that the airline was short-staffed. The entire country appears to be short-staffed. There were just not enough people to reassure everyone.

Even when they called in reinforcements and volunteers arrived, they simply didn’t have the resources to deal with the people waiting to get on flights and the influx of phone calls.

They were safe. Others were not.

It was no one’s fault.

Every time something goes wrong people like to point the finger or try to put the blame on someone.

MetService was blamed, the council was blamed, and Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown was blamed, although it seems he would rather be playing tennis than dealing “with media drongos over the flooding”.

Brown is certainly not made of the same stuff as Sir Bob Parker, who was Christchurch’s mayor at the time of the 2010-2011 earthquakes. His was the face and voice of calm as he informed his people and the entire county of what was happening and what to expect.

Napier Mayor Kirsten Wise also faced the media in a calm and collected way during the Napier flooding.

Brown, on the other hand has done himself a disservice by coming across as an angry man, inconvenienced by the entire event.

What happened is no one’s fault. I think it’s what comes after that matters the most. The support, the information and the help to get back on your feet.

As I write this there is a heavy red rain warning for Auckland, Northland, the Coromandel Peninsula, and an orange warning for other already-saturated parts of New Zealand. The country is holding its breath.

Kia kaha.