If there was ever a couple of weeks that demonstrated the extremes of the human condition, it has been the last two – right here in New Zealand. Kiwis can be a tad prone to setting themselves on a pedestal, a self-appointed beacon of ‘how to’ on any number of fronts, for the rest of the world to emulate. It’s an embarrassing and incredibly annoying side effect of abundance in a blessed country.

It must be a sobering shock to the ‘Kiwi bathers’, when we clearly demonstrate our actual residence in the middle of the global community’s normal distribution curve for behaviour. Far from occupying some exquisite position closer to the virtuous P-value.

In the wake of the rage unleashed on the land and citizens of the Hawke’s Bay and Tairawhiti by ex-tropical cyclone Gabrielle, survivors emerged to the devastation, grief, tragedy, and despair that now formed the backdrop of their new medium-term normal. It was at that moment that humans demarcated as they inevitably do and pinned their true colours on their chest.

Stories began to filter out describing of acts of personal heroism and communities rallying together. Of quiet, humble, individuals risking their own lives in the desire to help others, sometimes unsure as to whether their own families in another part of the region were in fact safe.

In our own industry there were demonstrations of the leadership it took to build the great companies we knew prior to the event, acts like reinstating depots and standards in record time. Such affirmative action by all accounts had an incredibly positive effect on staff morale that surely permeated into their personal situations at home.

An industry that on any normal day ankle taps its potential clout with infighting and petty politics, always unites in times like this. Accounts of shared resources and truck loads of aid for stricken carriers and their families continue to filter out.

Another aspect of history repeated itself as it always has also. As was the case in Christchurch, Covid, and any number of weather events of recent, it was the trucks that the people in the stricken region looked anxiously down their local roads for. Invariably, when they came, those trucks carried 99.9% of what those people needed. The most resilient and flexible transport modality, in times of crisis everything else is a nice to have. There’s a clear infrastructure message every time this happens.

As one person we were talking to said, “Standing on the side of the road at Waipukurau, it was awe-inspiring to watch rig after rig roll north.”

Then there’s the individual colours of the other kinds. They too come in all forms. The kind who will happily take gold from the public purse on one day, fully intending that on another, they’ll take the clothes off the backs of those whose pockets that donation came from. The kind who would take the generators supplying power that allows the continuity of vital communications to remote peoples. The kind who would loot from shops and thieve like the vile rodents they are, in some cases, likely from a house where the dead body of its occupant lay. The kind who cause good folk to have to waste time and resource blockading their roads in order to protect their processions and themselves.

Yes, as is always the case, the sons and daughters of anarchy will invariably crawl from the cesspit of their existence and wield their toxic craft on descent folk when crisis provides a convenient distraction for their cowardice.

At a time in our history where we constantly confuse understanding, compassion, and kindness with weakness across the breadth of society, it appears the plight of the victims is to suffer both the crime and consequence.

I believe the deployment of the army and police, en-mass, the instant the winds stopped, reinforced with instruction containing a bit more vertebrae than “Pull your head in”, would have been seen as a comfort by normal folk. Keeping society’s Borer in their holes is as important as humanitarian efforts at times like this. But that’s just me, I don’t have the inherent belief that all folk are saints-in-waiting, as the Police minister and commissioner appear to.

To those who would break the souls of those already in plight, I wish you silt. On top of you. And tonnes of it.

All the best

Dave McCoid
Editorial Director