Resilience in the Face of Impending Doom for New Zealand
Getting ready for future disasters. Once I've finished the stuff I need to do this week...
There are few people in New Zealand who deny that the climate is changing. This is a country with two degrees of separation; if you haven't been affected by floods, you know someone who has. We have been hammered by floods that are far more common than only a few decades ago. Up in the North Island this year, there were torrential storms and a cyclone that affected Auckland and Hawke's Bay, destroying hundreds of acres of orchards and other productive land as well as obliterating people's homes. When we have heavy rain in Lyttelton, we often have slips (the word Kiwis use for landslides) like the one that took out the back of our house in 2017. Although we don't see the frequency of bushfires that Australia suffers, we can have ones that threaten houses. A fire in the Port Hills near Lyttelton in 2017 did a tremendous amount of damage and erased our complacency.
The government is taking less action to prevent future climate chaos than the old one. And that one was pretty lacklustre. So it leaves it to us as communities to build resilience. Part of that is gardening.
When my feet are recovered, I'll be back to volunteering at the community garden and hoping to nudge up our food security by using it to supply a Plenty to Share table we will be starting later this summer (which has just started here, not that you know it. It is currently about 13°C).
One of our neighbours started an emergency hub. We've had some interesting presentations as a group. Three facts stood out for me from them.
There is a 60% chance of a major disaster in the next five years.
Holy guacamole.The fire threat this year is particularly bad because of El Niño. We should have a 5 m clear area around the house and we shouldn't be stacking wood against it. I don't think we have a 5 m clear area on any side of our (wooden) house and we have nowhere to put our wood but next to it! Not good.
The Alpine Fault ruptures about every 300 years, plus or minus 90 years. And it last went in 1717. Bugger. It will cause earthquakes significantly stronger (magnitude 8) than the one that devastated Lyttelton in 2011 (about magnitude 6). Read more and see interesting graphics here (we live on that blob you see on the east of the South Island: the Banks Peninsula).
So there is no time to waste.
But life goes on and I have a garden to try and wrestle under control (plus netting young seedlings against blackbird attack) and deadlines to meet…
For some UPBEAT news, press play:
(It’s not a podcast, just me reading the good environmental news stories I came upon this month. The sound in the background is the port and someone beeping down on the street as my studio is in no way soundproofed. See? It’s definitely nothing as professional as a podcast)
TTFN
Alex
PS. To combat possible future shortages, Molly has been honing her tennis ball hunting technique. She pounces on balls hidden in the weeds that surround our shoddy local tennis courts. Then she rolls over and over the ball so that she can smell like a tennis ball. Fully prepared, she is now ready to hunt her next tennis ball undetected.
This technique never fails.