Editorial: Cyclone Gabrielle - Challenges and questions about future resilience

EDITORIAL:

Gabrielle has delivered a sombre shock to the whole country, but experiences of the cyclone differ for different areas.

In Auckland, bright summer weather at the weekend helped the city’s recovery, although Muriwai and Piha remained isolated amid the risk of slips and several thousand households were still waiting for power.

People on the eastern side of the North Island were in far worse situations - continuing to struggle in landscapes resembling conflict zones.

Unity and empathy was shown in fundraising for the New Zealand disaster fund, and also in clean-up efforts.

But the rural north, Coromandel, East Coast, and Hawke’s Bay in particular face both immediate and longer-term problems.

Emergency crews at the weekend were still trying to restore supplies, water, fuel, power, internet and phone service to isolated communities where roads have been damaged and bridges washed away.

There have been reports of some looting and emotional eruptions as people try to manage in stressful times, but there have also been examples of neighbours looking out for others.

While helping people get back on their feet is the current priority for the Government, civil defence and service providers, the cyclone represents a huge social and economic blow through damage to homes, farms, businesses and the infrastructure that communities rely on.

Hawke’s Bay growers and winemakers have taken a hammering and there will likely be fruit and vegetable shortages and price rises. Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor also said up to 50 per cent of kūmara crops had been destroyed in Northland.

Decisions on how to raise and spend large sums of money to support people and businesses impacted will have to be worked out relatively quickly.

The Government also faces the difficult challenge of spending rebuild dollars in smart ways that improve resilience rather than just repair damage. The Coromandel, for instance, suffers regular damage to roads in storms, and repairs don’t last long.

Working out how resilience investments will be paid for will be a major political headache going forward. Will special levies or taxes, and toll roads be back on the agenda?

A huge lake over Hawke's Bay farmland formed after the Waipawa River, diverted in the 1880s, reverted to its original course. Photo / Mark Mitchell

There will also be questions about how the catastrophe in Hawke’s Bay unfolded. Residents in the flood-prone Esk Valley were not all evacuated in advance of the heavy flooding.

Once known for wineries and orchards, the Esk Valley now is a scene of mud, silt, abandoned cars, and caked houses after a wall of water swept through it. Residents had to make desperate attempts to escape their homes on Monday night. A child’s life was lost.

Napier had a major flash flood just two years ago. The Redclyffe substation, which was swamped in the cyclone and caused much of the power loss for Napier and Hawke’s Bay, had been identified as critically at risk in 2020.

Napier deputy mayor Annette Brosnan pointed out in a Facebook post that “we have an electrical substation built in 1925 next to a river with limited resilience planning leaving 60 thousand plus without power for the best part of a week”.

Work to improve its disaster resilience was due to begin later this year pending funding.

• Please donate - how you can help the victims of Cyclone Gabrielle; NZ Herald teams up with Red Cross
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