Editorial
New Zealanders are prepared for extreme weather today — or at least they ought to be. For a week our weather services have been tracking a tropical cyclone that hit Samoa and Tonga and is coming this way.
Gita is going to bring gale force winds and torrential rain to
parts of the country. Its epicentre was on course to hit the lower North Island and most of the South Island but the rest of the country will feel its lash too.
The north should be well prepared. For the past few days we have been sweltering in the tropical air flowing our way ahead of the cyclone and living under heavy, muggy cloud that is building to a storm.
So are we prepared? Probably not, in the vast majority of households. Sure, the sun umbrella is furled, the deck furniture stowed, nothing left lying around that might be hurled through a window. The Ministry of Civil Defence suggests we should be prepared for the possibility of power cuts, loss of the water supply and road closures. It even suggest we have a bag packed in case the house has to be evacuated.
It is not predicting any of these things, or course. Precautions are not predictions, a distinction all should remember. Some of us are inclined to scoff at weather warnings, since the weather often turns out to be less fearsome than the warnings. But there were probably a few scoffers in Edgecumbe last February before the flood. Some might have been among those in Whanganui who later spent the night in a local hall, and among those camping in the Hunuas.
