Historical Evidence

There has been a to and fro in some media about NIWA not providing the correct information to councils at times of extreme weather events .Especially in the case of Gabrielle.

We have Ian Wishart with an analysis  that includes information gathered from old newspapers that are available to us all and is likely a fairly accurate representation  of historical events , especially given that in past times news was covered without the bias and misinformation we may now see.

What has surprised me has been the response from NIWA and now the Minister , on the Wishart claims. The immediate rejection or scoffing about the fact that may be lessons were not learnt from history.

I mentioned in a previous post about the loss of institutional knowledge throughout  our Councils and even in private enterprise.

It is astounding that an experienced cabinet Minister appears to lack knowledge about the history of our councils and how the changes that were made in the eighties seem to have been forgotten.

It would be fair to speculate that some people involved in Catchment Boards would have suggested that it the important work they carried out would be diminished in importance as time passed and other more fancy projects would receive dollars and attention.

Many of the staff involved in historical catchment operations are still around today and carry the  detail of so many responses and development of infrastructure that was required to deal with many historical events.

I have talked to some of these people and have to say that I myself was here to experience Bola and other storms such as 1966 and I had the opportunity to discuss the 1938 flood with my neighbor before he passed on.

Collectively there is a huge amount of knowledge in the community and there was a huge amount of knowledge within Councils.

There has been a move over the last twenty years to upend the makeup of councils and replace experience with a new brigade of computer bandits .The old and tried method of slowly replacing people as they retired, so to allow knowledge to be passed on to the next generation , has been extinguished .Zapped. 

Thus we find ourselves with an argument.

He said ,she said and no answers.

No responsibility.

Oh. 

For Minister Collins to indicate  today that NIWA were the font of all knowledge re the weather let me aghast.