To say it has been a difficult week would be an understatement, at least for those of us living in Te Ika-a-Māui or the North Island, as it has long been unimaginatively named. My heart goes out to the many thousands who have had their lives turned upside down, are currently displaced or have lost everything they owned this week.
I just looked up the population and I see it is just shy of 4 million people living in the North Island. Given that Cyclone Gabrielle hit hard in Northland, Auckland, Coromandel, Bay of Plenty, Tairāwhiti and Hawkes Bay with lesser effects throughout much of the rest of island, it is not an exaggeration to say that the impact has been felt by at least a couple of million people, probably more. As I write this, we are still learning about the scale of damage and loss.
After taking a direct hit from Cyclone Dovi exactly a year ago, we spent Tuesday in a state of extreme anxiety as the winds hit us again. We didn’t get the rain and sea surges that have drowned the eastern coast and places north. There was some damage here but nothing on the scale of Dovi and negligible compared to the damage suffered elsewhere. I didn’t bother photographing it because it would seem trite compared to the loss and destruction in badly hit areas.
When the earthquake hit on Wednesday night, it seemed like the universe was conspiring against us. At 6 or 6.1, it was a solid shake lasting quite a long time. It made me realise how frayed my nerves are and I don’t generally suffer from frayed nerves. I am not alone in that. I imagine the current high state of anxiety across our country is similar to that experienced across Australia during their horrendous fire season of 2019-2020. A few high profile, shrill voices blame the media; some even accused the media of over-hyping the anticipated arrival of Cyclone Gabrielle and causing unnecessary anxiety. Those voices went silent when Gabrielle turned out to be at the extreme end of the worst case scenario.
We live in difficult times. Those of us largely unaffected by Gabrielle may hope for a quiet breathing space, time to gather our thoughts, maybe even to experience a little boredom in normality, as we used to know it. But those who have been hit so very hard by this natural disaster don’t have the luxury of hoping for even that.
Stay safe. And if you or people close to you are among the badly affected, may you at least be able to see a path through this catastrophe in the weeks ahead and to find hope after despair. The sun will shine again, which is why I picked the colour yellow to accompany this post.
Abbie
Tikorangi The Jury Garden 
It certainly has been a week not to be forgotten here in Aotearoa. I have managed to hear from a lot of people I know in Hawke’s Bay, but it is going to take a long time to get over this disaster.
It is beyond awful. I am also mindful that we are getting wall to wall coverage of the situation in Hawkes Bay and the Gisborne area but so many people are struggling in the Coromandel, in West Auckland and in Northland. Not to mention the people displaced and hit so hard in the Auckland floods – was it just a couple of weeks ago? It feels like an eternity but so many people devastated by those are still displaced and in very difficult situations – alive but homeless and having lost everything and now almost out of sight. The sheer scale is hard to comprehend.
It just seems that the latest disaster has just overtaken the last one.
Thank you Abbie
An empathetic and sensitively written article
Regards
Peter
Thanks Peter. I appreciate your comment.
My heart goes out to all of you!
The media is mere entertainment. That is sort of why I ignore much of it. Our storms were bad, and were actually the worst since 1982, but were not nearly as bad as weather in other regions. Ours were in the news much more, probably because of where we are located. Friends were checking in on us to see how things were going. I sort of felt left out because damage was not as bad as it was ‘supposed’ to be. This earthquake in Turkey and Syria, which killed 46,000 (so far), seems to be in the news less than the earthquake in Ridgecrest, which killed one person.
Well, when all access roads are out, power is out, cell towers are down, landlines are down and there’s no internet reception, the media is the only way to reach people. Enough people had battery-powered transistor radios to get some news and advice from radio stations – most of which did an amazing job of filling that role over several days. Two small cities had to resort to printing old fashioned newspapers (presumably using portable generators) to distribute free to their people giving essential advice like where to get drinking water and emergency food. Quite large areas are still without power and road access. At times like this, the media need to step up and most have done. But not all….
Yes, in other regions. Here, it just makes the problems seem worse than they really are. I work for the media, and find that even within horticultural topics, sensationalism sells. I know of very few other garden columnists who know anything about horticulture. Most just write about gardening because no one else on their staff will do so. I am often ‘corrected’ by someone who read contrary information within the context of a garden column that was written by someone such as a sports commentator or financial analyst.
Goodness, a dreadful situation. I hope all those affected recover as best possible.
Alas, no quick fixes for this situation. The road ahead is long. Though that is a bad metaphor when so many are left wirh no road access at all.
I totally agree Abbie, I think we are all so sick of certain elements of the media attacking everything the Government does. Whether it was about closing the schools with the flooding or preparing for a cyclone, it is just tiring. Like antivaxxing, I have friends who are anti-stormers who claimed the storm warnings were just Government fear mongering etc, even after their house flooded in the last one. Just bizarre… I think they all need to turn off the podcasts! I am very thankful it did not make the direct hit on Auckland as initially forecast, but the devastation elsewhere is certainly terrible. I did have a honeysuckle trellis with honshu caterpillars on it blow down, but I did manage to tack it back up without issue.
Thanks Abbie for writing so sensitively. Cyclone Gabrielle will continue to be a most humbling experience as we watch all those severely-affected people endeavour to put their lives back together.