Things had moved a long way forward by the time of the more recent South Island calamities, the five Hawke's Bay councils — the regional council and the Napier, Hastings, Wairoa and Central Hawke's Bay councils — had formed the regional civil defence emergency management group.
Coming from a job in environmental management at the Hastings District Council, Mr Macdonald was appointed as group manager in August 2011, six months after the most serious of the Canterbury quakes, when 185 people were killed on February 22 that year.
"The community had to look after itself for quite a long period of time," he said as he took up the appointment, heralding a focus on having people to prepared to cope for themselves in the event of a major disaster.
But more pertinent to the appointment was his military training, as a volunteer member of the New Zealand Army Reserve, or Territorial Force as it was known.
At the age of 52 he has 30 years of it behind him, including 12 months with a United Nations peacekeeping force in the Middle East.
He became "quite involved" in the Reserve while studying at Massey University, and became commander of its territorial unit 57 Battalion, and is currently deputy commander of INZ Brigade, which is his major involvement outside of the job and family, with three children aged 15, 11 and 4.
The family does come first, and does even come on the job, as happened when the snow emergency developed in August 2016. His wife was away, and the children and their colouring-in books became accessories at the co-ordination centre until the family care arrangements could swing into action.
"I am effectively on-call 24/7, you don't know when something is going to happen," he says, nor where, for with a more national co-ordination there is always the likelihood of being called into other region's management when a civil defence emergency has broken out.
He was called into a senior role at the National Crisis Management Centre in Wellington ("under the Beehive") following the November 2016 Kaikoura earthquake.
While there have been many storm events, the only declaration of a civil defence emergency in Hawke's Bay since he took on the role was in the heat of summer, for the Waimarama fires on February 13 last year. The declaration enabled resources to be brought in from throughout the country.
Comparable, but able to be handled locally, was the Eskdale flood earlier this month. The follow-up continued on Thursday with a meeting of residents called by the Hastings District Council, which houses the crisis management centre in a building which is itself set for about $1 million of upgrading, including strengthening.
The "broad" nature of the job is highlighted by events like the Eskdale flood, with accommodation having to be found for 30 people displaced by the torrent that raged through the camping ground, and the need to clothe those who'd fled with nothing. It's not all about reopening roads and getting networks going.
With changing times, and 50-plus cruise liners berthing at Napier Port each year, a mainly-paper exercise will be held this week involving a cruise liner scenario.
Mr Macdonald says that apart from a shipping mishap near at hand, accommodating 4000 people would have to be addressed if they were ashore at the time of a catastrophe and unable to return to their vessel.
The ham radio specialists have not been replaced — there might always be a need — but "public information specialists" are now crucial, he says, because of the use and place of social media.
"It is a huge job."