Power and the fury

Perched on the edge of the Earth, our tiny islands always seem at the mercy of the prevailing winds. But when I look back on 1998, I remember a year in which much of the news was the weather. The furies concocted high in the sky and beyond the horizon made for grimmer reading than usual.

A cyclone which gathered force in the Caribbean in early November before unleashing its rage on the coasts of Central America was one of history's great disasters.
Cyclone Mitch created floods of biblical proportions which obliterated shanty-town shacks and substantial buildings and turned swollen rivers into massive mudslides which buried whole villages.

By the time the wind dropped and the sky cleared, more than 12,000 were dead or irretrievably missing. Many were washed out to sea, including one woman - memorably and miraculously - picked up by the United States Coastguard hundreds of kilometres off shore.

Closer to home the sea wrought sudden and shocking mayhem. Three tsunamis, conjured by an earthquake far to the north, arrived with an apocalyptic roar on the northern coast of Papua New Guinea, destroying a dozen villages. A few hellish minutes left 3000 confirmed dead; perhaps twice that number have never been seen again.

The traditional closeness between PNG and this country - New Zealanders were prominent among those providing funds and personnel in the wave's aftermath - made the disaster seem almost local. But the rest of the globe was not spared.

A summer of floods in China claimed more than 2500 lives and made millions homeless. At one point more than half a million were evacuated from the rural hinterland so dykes could be dynamited and floods precipitated before rivers gained too much destructive power.

Bangladesh, where disastrous flooding is depressingly routine, was laid waste by the worst floods in its half-century of history. At one point, three-quarters of the country was under water.

Here at home, spring floods turned the Waikato River from a gentle giant into a destructive monster and floods further south caused damage to homes and livelihoods which have still to be repaired.

El Nino and La Nina have become terms in daily conversation. Flowers blossomed early in a mild winter, pohutukawa bloomed late and for much of the populous north the summer promises to be studded with storms.

Before this fickle, uncontrollable and increasingly unpredictable power, human enterprise looks as puny as ever it did.
- Peter Calder, senior writer

Pictured: Rescue workers retrieve a body from what remains of Sissano, one of a dozen villages on the north coast of Papua New Guinea devastated by a tsunami. PICTURE / AP/FOTOPRESS