The answer might lie in coastal shipping
RESILIENCE. It’s a word that was perhaps overused about Canterbury, and, particularly, Christchurch, after the 201011 earthquakes (is it because of the earthquakes that Canterbury University now offers a masters degree in urban resilience and renewal?), and must have angered those whose houses were poorly assessed and/or “repaired”.
It was resurrected after the terrorist attack at the mosques on March 15, 2019, and, even before the endofMay downpours and flooding in Canterbury, groups such as the MBIE Endeavour project, Ma te Haumaru o te Wai, have been working “to build a more flood resilient Aotearoa”.
Resilience is an issue not just for those areas directly affected by natural and other disasters.
Empty shelves in supermarkets after the recent floods reminded those in the South how dependent communities have become on uninterrupted transport, mainly by road, in long, narrow, mountainous Te Wai Pounamu.
It was bad enough when the upper east coast road and rail were wiped out by the Kaikoura earthquake, and transport from Picton to
Christchurch had to use the inland route through Tophouse and the Lewis Pass, but it was even more sobering to see on television the circuitous route that trucks travelling from Christchurch to Dunedin and further south were faced with immediately after the May Canterbury floods: north and west via the Lewis Pass, down the West Coast, and then east across Arthur’s Pass.
With the Ashburton bridge able to carry trucks as well as light vehicles, and detours further south, road transport down State Highway 1 has resumed after less than a week, but rail transport is still blocked.
In 1980 “oncein100years” (yeah, right) flooding cut all Dunedin’s road and rail links, flooded Momona Airport, closing it for weeks, and isolated the city except by helicopter and sea.
For many years after European settlement road and rail transport was limited (the ChristchurchPicton railway was only completed in the 1940s), and sea transport was the travel mode of choice. Perhaps it would be wise for the Government to look at incentives to encourage redevelopment of a network of coastal shipping companies (remember the Union Steamship Company?) to decentralise sea transport and improve the country’s resilience, especially given the potential for major Alpine Fault and other earthquakes to cause multiple, simultaneous blockages of road and rail transport.
New Zealand Post has centralised its previous 26 lettersorting centres to three, in Auckland, Palmerston North and Christchurch, slashing local mail resilience, which, even in an electronic age, remains important.
Civis received no NZ Post mail in the week after the Canterbury floods until Friday.
It’s understandable that mail from north of Ashburton was delayed, but when one remembers that mail posted in Dunedin to a Dunedin address now has to travel to Christchurch to be sorted, and then return (generating extra carbon emissions from doubling transport), one despairs at NZ Post’s decisions.
In contrast, Civis knows of someone with a hospital appointment on the Tuesday after the floods who, because of sudden, brief illness, had to cancel it, by phone, that day. The new appointment was in the letterbox the next day, by DX.
For the last six years the Southern District Health Board has employed a multinational company to prepare food in Auckland or elsewhere for inpatients and those receiving “Meals on Wheels” in Dunedin, freeze it, and truck it to Dunedin.
Presumably the SDHB stockpiles some frozen meals in Dunedin to cover transport delays, but prolonged road and rail blockages would pose a problem, especially if Momona was flooded as in 1980 (increasingly likely as global warming brings heavier, more frequent, downpours).
What kitchen facilities will the new Dunedin Hospital have?
If there isn’t space, and facilities, for a fullscale kitchen, the hospital is doomed to be not just subject to transport problems with the present supplier, but at the mercy of commercial food businesses forever.
Resilience planning must be local as well as national.