In these shaky isles we are all too aware of the devastation earthquakes can cause.
In Venezuela, hit by two shallow earthquakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 last Wednesday, the death toll has already risen to more than 1400 and likely to
rise much higher, with thousands injured and tens of thousands of people still unaccounted for.
The shallowness of the quakes added to their impact.
While the government there has been trying to convince people it has mounted a strong response, people on the ground, which was continuing to be rocked by large aftershocks, told a different story.
They cited patchy access to machinery and other help as the first 48 to 72 hours, considered crucial for retrieving people alive, ticked away.
In a country long wracked by economic and political turmoil, it is not hard to understand
why its response has been lacking.
In such disarray, earthquake preparedness is unlikely to have been high on the agenda.
In that void, it has been up to the international community to rally in support, and the United States has been a big player in this, perhaps mending some fences in its testy relationship with Venezuela following the capture of its president and his wife in January,
Among other things, its personnel worked to get the Simon Bolivar International Airport runway in Caracas operational after it was badly damaged in the quake.
International aid and rescuers have been pouring into the area.
While there may still be some hope of miraculous rescues,sadly, given the time which has elapsed, most of the ongoing news is likely to be grim.
How much of this was avoidable is a question which should be asked, even if it is difficult to find an answer.
Celebrate the good moments
We love to think of ourselves as the little engine that could when it comes to international sports events.
Often we are that little engine and even if we are not, we can always resort to showing how well we do against other countries on a per capita basis.
At the weekend many dared to believe the All Whites could beat the odds and take out Belgium in Vancouver to get beyond group play at the Fifa World Cup.
It was a bold hope, given at the time of the game, Belgium was ranked 10th in the world
and New Zealand were the lowest-ranked team in the tournament.
We lost the game 5-1, even though we held Belgium at bay for about 27 minutes before the scoring spree began.
In the days ahead there will be much rear-view mirror gazing by the commentariat about what could and should have happened in New Zealand’s games in the tournament.
Whether this navel-gazing will be productive is questionable.
If it produced a way for any future national teams to have more top-level encounters before the next World Cup that might make it worthwhile.
Included in the questions will be whether they should have beaten Iran and/or Egypt and whether they should have been better on defence.
But postmortems should also not ignore the exciting play we saw; the stunning three-goal performance by Eli Just, the goal from Finn Surman, along with some impressive surges on attack.
It is worth noting the four goals New Zealand scored in the tournament are one more than the total goals we managed in our previous World Cup appearances in 1982 and 2010.
Nor should we forget the fun of New Zealand defender Tim Payne’s rise to international social media stardom after Argentinian football influencer Valen Scarsini identified him as the least-known player in the tournament and urged people to get behind him.
Sport at this level may be a serious business but that does not mean we should take ourselves too seriously.
