I got a little bit tired this week listening to the jibes being flung at Auckland from residents of the South Island. Many were incensed that reports of Auckland's four-and-a-half-hour blackout led the news, when a number of mainland communities had been without power for a couple of days.
Some
poor families have been told it will be at least another week before they're back on line. But be that as it may, one of the rules of journalism is that you go with the story that affects the most people. Given that a million Aucklanders were disrupted by the power cut, and that retailers lost an estimated $70 million of business, and that the vulnerability of Auckland's power supply was highlighted, I think it's fair enough that Auckland's power cut led the news.
It doesn't mean that the residents of New Zealand's most populous region lack backbone, or that they go to pieces in a crisis just because they want to know why and how the failure happened. Sure, the South Islanders are doing it tough, but if you choose to live in a remote and beautiful part of the country, far away from the noise and bustle of the city, you're also accepting that you'll be last cab off the rank when it comes to resources.
Still, there's nothing wrong with taking a little bit of that mainland resilience and applying it to city living.
There's nothing attractive about depending on other people for your wellbeing and the power outage was a timely reminder that we all need to be prepared.
For all the millions of dollars the Health Department spent on leaflets asking us to organise our households in readiness for a flu pandemic, the power cut may have been the sort of jolt people need to actually buy that water and stock up on gas bottles and candles.
Auckland's reliance on one fragile line for most of its power is absurd, and that vulnerability needs to be fixed before Aucklanders can rely on the power company to provide a first-world service.
In the meantime, we need to ensure that we too can survive on our own and by our wits should the lights go out.
