Plan B key for when all goes bust

ONE weld. One broken weld.

That's all it took to potentially raise the price of greenhouse-grown vegetables, create shortages of bread and cereals and cause millions of litres of milk to be dumped down the drain.

The Maui pipeline, which runs from Taranaki over more than 300km across the upper half of the North Island, sprung a leak and had to be shut down.

Result?

Initial chaos as the water for the lattes and cappucinos failed to boil, and eventual shortages and wastage as factories, fuelled on gas, ground to a halt.

Not all was lost, however, with the boss of Dominion Breweries reassuring their consumers that beer supplies would not be affected.

It reminded me of the occasion, a few years back, when the power supply across a major swathe of central Auckland went down because of one big cable dissolving.

Everything stopped and the country's most vibrant metropolitan economy was crippled for one major reason - apart from the actual event which causes the stoppage.

There was no plan B.

If a pipe or a cable fails, that's it.

At home, if the element in the jug fails you get a pot out and boil the water. If the power fails you light candles in the night, and if necessary roll out the barbecue and cook tea on that.

Or if you have gas, you fire it up if the power fades, and when the gas fails you use the electricity.

Christchurch endured failures of both for not days, but weeks and weeks. Yet there was an admirable stoicism about it all.

But when the Maui pipeline sprung a leak last Tuesday, half the restaurateurs and cafe proprietors of Ponsonby were fighting to get the prime spot in front of the television film cameras to loudly air their disgust and disappointment.

Which to a degree was understandable, although their thoughts and words really should have focused on developing a good old-fashioned plan B; portable gas cylinders and cookers, perhaps?

There is nothing certain about anything these days.

For years and years, we all took the Manawatu Gorge stretch of the highway network for granted.

There was a sort of plan B, albeit one called the Saddle Road which had never really been maintained or modified "just in case" something major happened to the gorge road.

Which it now has.

Things - even take-them-for-granted major things - can, and will, break.

We all need a plan B, and the best example of embracing this necessity was put on public display last Sunday night.

Pipeline Carter had suffered a breakage, then Cable Cruden snapped.

But there was no panic in the mind of the Right Honourable Lord Sir Graham Henry, MBE, CBE, VC, DSO and Bar.

Because he had a plan B.

Mr Donald ... get out there resume normal service.

See? It works.