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Editorial

April 23, 1968

Blowin' In The Wind

Opinions expressed in Salient are not necessarily those of Vuwsa.

The winds that devastated a large part of Wellington last Wednesday week left more than the wrecked Wahine, unroofed houses and uprooted trees in its wake. It left us questioning how able our country, and in particular our city, are in dealing with major emergencies. In a situation where—the weather office has told Salient—an extremely severe depression had been predicted on Tuesday morning, and every conceivable institution informed, nobody felt obliged to take major precautions.

It must be noted, in fairness, that until very early on Wednesday nobody could possibly have forecast that winds would reach the velocity they eventually did. But people still knew a singularly vicious storm was on its way—and they took no action.

The Prime Minister, Mr. K. J. Holyoake, and the Leader of the Opposition, Mr. N. E. Kirk, have already criticised the Civil Defence organisation, which failed to act in any way at all in Wellington's circumstances where volunteer workers were often urgently needed.

It is clear that an effective Civil Defence system should have been standing by on Tuesday.

That the Civil Defence did not work like this is largely the result of its structure—an appendage to local bodies, which are themselves starved of funds by the central government, and which in revenge starve Civil Defence, a system which the government has foisted on to them. But even within these limits it could have done more than it did.

Then there was Wednesday morning. In one Public Service office, as the news of evacuations, of houses in danger and periodic bulletins from the Wahine came over the air, somebody murmured: "They shouldn't have let the kids go to school." He was right. They shouldn't have. Who, on Wednesday morning, made This decision,

If we had to wait until people got to their offices for a decision to be made, it is worth noting that the Education Board offices do open at eight, though possibly the bosses always arrive late. But be that as it may, the decision should have been made at seven by somebody with both authority and initiative, if these are not contradictions in terms.

Then we come to the Wellington City Council which refused to declare a state of emergency because people might go home from work.

Perhaps they could have declared a state of emergency And told people to stay where they were—or is this too imaginative an idea for Sir Francis Kitts?

For those with their eyes on coming local body elections it didn't really matter because if Sir Francis made the major decisions wrongly Cr. McGrath, as chairman of the Civil Defence Committee of the council, made all the minor decisions wrongly.

We can safely anticipate that civil defence will not be an issue in Wellington's mayoral elections.

New Zealand has a bureaucracy unused to making important decisions quickly. It is evident that under pressure the decisions are not only not made faster, but they are not made at all.

It is frightening to think of what our reaction might be to an earthquake or an air attack.

The real test will be in the administrative washing-up this time round—what will happen to the school rebuilding programme now that the decay of so many school buildings has been spectacularly advanced? Will the decline of the building industry over the last few months be halted? Is the government prepared to spend money to put things right? It would be comforting, but also naive, to think the automatic answer to these questions was "yes".

O.J.G.