KEY POINTS:
A reader writes: "This was the sight that we were confronted with when our elderly next door neighbour mistook the accelerator for the brake! She reversed so hard she ended up crushing trees and destroying her own brick wall! Who says boy racers are the ones to watch."
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Richard Symonds of Hillsborough writes: "My wife and I were sitting watching the weather on TV One last night, when we found ourselves literally galvanised! We were witnessing something pristine and new; marvellous and magical. A bit like a supernova, only bigger and more impressive, as we said afterwards. Yes, we had witnessed the birth of a new weather cliche, an event so rare that we had to rack our brains to remember how long 'weather bombs' had been around. Being only in our 50s we were too young to have heard the first damping down of 'hotspots'. But we were there this time, when some luckless town got a 'good rinsing'! And we know we will be well and truly 'rinsed' from now on."
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Shirley Bongard has spent the last six months building a house trying to make the best decisions. "Realising that Auckland would undergo more power cuts in the years to come, we chose gas appliances for water heating, cooking and heating. This week, with a 24 hour power cut in Orewa, we have discovered that all our new gas appliances have been very carefully designed to need electricity to operate the starters. We couldn't override the automatic starters and hence had no hot water, no cooking and no heating. So much for technological advances and thank goodness for the free hot showers available at the Orewa Caravan Park."
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A reader writes: "Listening to Love Songs Till Midnight on Viva last night (my wife had set the radio station, okay?) some bloke rang in to dedicate a song to his beloved in Whangaruru (Northland). The song? Islands in the Stream! What was doubly precious is that the guy said it without the slightest hint of storm-related irony."
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Paul Thompson says the energy saving Waitakere City Council might like to turn off a few lights at night at its council buildings. "I have driven past it after 9pm on every night from Monday to Thursday and the place is lit up like a Christmas tree."
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Dorothy Fowler would like to give top marks to the Auckland City Council for a quick response to the civil emergency. "There they were, bright and early, ticketing the cars of Waiheke commuters who had been trapped in town when the ferries stopped running during the storm."
