This week’s wild weather has served as a timely reminder just how small we are when confronted with the enormous power of a planet.
The unpleasant — though not entirely unusual — spring weather plunged much of the South into survival mode over the last few days with snow, heavy rain, flooding and slips causing damage and delays around the region.
Such weather proves you can always get too much of a good thing. Raindrops and snowflakes are as benign occurrences as nature produces, yet in vast quantities both can cause severe damage and suffering.
As heavy as the rain was this week it never quite made it to levels seen previously — the South escaped largely with mild damage and inconvenience, rather than the catastrophe another day or two of very wet weather or an even heavier downpour would have caused.
But it serves to remind us that the weather, like the land beneath us, is something far bigger and more volatile than we often like to admit.
People have always strived to conquer that which causes the most anguish. Society has come so far, such victories are now considered normal. Child-birth is no longer the Russian-roulette of ecstasy and misery it once was. Premature babies have incubators and around-the-clock medical care. Medical advances have made us near bullet-proof in many regards, while modern houses would seem like science fiction to people from just a few decades ago.
We strive to control the world around us, but the world around us is far bigger than our current advances can contain. Nevertheless, we are accustomed to blaming people when outcomes don’t reflect our desires, and the weather is often the cause of such frustrations.
In 2015 it was the Dunedin City Council which wore the bulk of the city’s anger over flooding, though a subsequent report found just a small portion of the flooding could be attributed to human error. This week the same council, as it has done before since the 2015 floods, went into overdrive ensuring if there was to be flooding, it wouldn’t be for lack of work on its part.
While it is more common to apportion blame than praise, it should be said many thousands of households have benefitted from the Dunedin City Council’s dedicated, if somewhat repentant approach, to flood avoidance over the last three and a-half years.
It should also be mentioned how well the Taieri’s contingency measures continue to perform in such events, with the huge overflow ‘‘ponding’’ areas once again ensuring the bulk of that river’s water has kept flowing seaward — rather than into Mosgiel and surrounding localities.
Elsewhere, around Clutha, Southland, Central Otago and Waitaki areas, men and women worked relentlessly to ensure roads were opened or closed as needed, properties were protected where possible, and people were kept safe and dry.
It’s easy to look at the people performing these tasks as "just" the council and contractors — the people paid to do it. But in severe weather these maintenance workers provide far more effort than wages alone demand. The South has always had a reputation for resilience, strong neighbourly values and doggedness. These are qualities on show this week and the people responsible deserve our thanks.
But we shouldn’t let such work blind us to the reality that, next time, the rain may not stop falling. Nor should we let our propensity to finger-point blind us to the fact that, in many cases, we can each help alleviate the damage of such events through our own maintenance and preparedness.
Flooding, snowfalls, droughts, forest fires and earthquakes are all eminently possible every year in our region. While society continues to inoculate us from all manner of risks and danger, it can never inoculate us from natural disasters. And we should all, always, be prepared for that.
