We have a human tragedy, that is horrific and the terrible drama will play out in the fullness of time. We all feel for the people involved. But something needs to be said right now to avoid all this in the future.
Our politicians are obsessed with the politics of climate change and the control over the population that they want.
The planet is billions of years old and ever since the first drop of rain fell on it, it has been eroding and shaped by it. That is why we have mountains and valleys, rivers and lakes. Erosion is why we have silted up harbours, and why the topographical features of the planet are continually evolving and indeed abrading into the oceans. It’s what it does. Nothing new there.
Mountains, rivers and lakes are not people in spite of what you are led to believe, as majestic as they are, they don’t have personalities, human rights or traits. They are landforms, roadside berms and railway embankments are made of the same stuff. So is the stuff your house is sitting on. Rain, rivers and slips go downhill, they don’t come back up to argue. That’s gravity.
There are a lot of reasons for slips, but whenever you have permeable silts on a fragile slope and you feed water into it from the surface or the substrata, whether it sits on an inclined slip plane or not, it can turn to thick soup and you can get a slip.
Deep rooted vegetation is a very good way to mitigate the risk and our mounts that remain standing, owe a lot to vegetation, perhaps everything.
It is now fairly evident that the Tauranga council, at the insistence of Iwi, using rate-payers money, removed big trees in the area of this slip simply because they were colonial.
This is where superstition, stupidity and cultural arrogance hits the brick wall. There is a massive lesson to be learned here.
As it happens the very people that insisted on the removal of the trees, are the same ones that are now talking about the ‘maunga recovering’, ‘time off for healing’, no doubt some sort of ‘spiritual controlling rahui’ and other spiritual claptrap when in fact it is nothing more than soil engineering and landslip mitigation, all of which they know nothing about and should be left to the geotech engineers.
Having said that, where were the council engineers when they were removing the trees..? Asleep?
There are some excellent overhead views of this slip and there is no doubt in my mind at least, as to what happened. There is going to be an enquiry for sure, but the question is, are they going to investigate the massive elephant in the room here...or are we going to be listening to the lunatic green fringe and be paying a lot more in taxes to mitigate ‘climate change’..?
People of Tauranga and indeed people of New Zealand, you have to take a kick up the backside too for voting these fringe lunatics into your councils and government. You whinge about taxes and rates and then allow these woke fools to put in place policies that waste it...and now worse...!!
Yes this disaster is raw in everyone’s mind right now, but now is a great time to wake up and take an interest in what is happening to your country at a national and local government level.
You are losing control to the fake tribalists who insist on 12th century spiritual nonsense for the eventual benefit and current control, power and riches of the gravy train, aided by ridiculously stupid governments and councils....and the media.
What we have just witnessed is a civil engineering failure thanks to Iwi and council incompetence, not climate change, not spirits.
let’s do something about it before it happens again, and it will.
Rod Kane is a former businessman and a steadfast New Zealander. This article was sourced from facebook.
22 comments:
So perfectly said
Said so plainly Rod, thank you, even councillors should be able to understand.
Couldn’t agree more!
First and foremost heartfelt condolences to the families involved in this tragedy. We are living at "The Mount." The name the locals call this landmark. Not Maunga as RNZ and others call it. Nobody here calls it Maunga. There will no doubt be no accountability but there should be. Not a witch hunt but not a whitewash either. So many senseless actions are being taken now to de-colonise. Beautiful trees removed and ugly flax planted everywhere. People being barred access to places. Places re-named. Also ridiculous reporters asking ridiculous questions were not welcome at the beginning when locals were trying to cope with the tragedy.
From the Herald, slightly edited:-
A scientific probe into the stability of Mount Maunganui – including the area that collapsed on Thursday morning – had already revealed it WAS PRONE TO “MASS MOVEMENT” SLIPS AFTER HEAVY RAIN.
As emergency workers, rescue teams and recovery dogs search for six people missing after a massive landslide on to a Mount Maunganui campground, it has been revealed there were UP TO SEVEN SLIPS ON THE MOUNT DURING THIS WEEK’S MASSIVE STORM - SOME OF THEM PRIOR TO THE TRAGEDY.
THAT INCLUDED ONE ABOUT 5AM ON THURSDAY – FOUR AND A HALF HOURS BEFORE THE MUCH LARGER AND MORE DEVASTATING ONE.
Those earlier signs caused one camper to get up and urge others to wake and move away from the slope behind the Mount Maunganui Beachside Holiday Park.
Tragically, that woman is now unaccounted for – believed to have been in the campground’s toilet block when the later and larger slip occurred about 9.30 on Thursday morning.
After the initial slips, including the one that came down near the campground around 5am, the Tauranga City Council announced at 8.56am that it was closing the walking tracks around the popular tourist spot as severe weather had “significantly destabilised the maunga, creating an ongoing risk of further slips and falling debris”.
BUT THE COUNCIL MADE NO CALL TO EVACUATE EITHER THE MOUNT MAUNGANUI BEACHSIDE HOLIDAY PARK OR THE NEIGHBOURING MOUNT HOT POOLS.
BOTH FACILITIES ARE COUNCIL-OWNED, AND THE LARGER SLIP CAME DOWN HALF AN HOUR LATER.
MOUNT MAUNGANUI LOCAL ALISTER MCHARDY TOLD THE HERALD HE HAD WITNESSED EARLIER SLIPS, DESCRIBING TWO AREAS OF MOVING GROUND ON THE MOUNTAIN AS HE WENT FOR A MORNING WALK AROUND 6AM.
HE SAID HE HAD PHONED 111 TO REPORT THE DANGER AND TRY TO GET THE WALKING TRACKS AND CAMPING GROUND EVACUATED.
BUT HE CLAIMS THE 111 OPERATOR “SAID I HAD TO TALK TO THE COUNCIL”.
Instead, he said he started waking up campers himself to warn them of the land movement nearby.
I doubt anyone with relevant credentials will be on the enquiry.
And anyone called as expert witness who might suggest in their testimony a similar cause will be castigated.
It's unlikely this subject on the real cause will be explored much by the NZ mainstream media.
Truly Rod, We have seen this sort of AVOIDABLE disaster before.
Pike River, White Island, Cave Creek !!
Yes we’ve seen it all before and my experience of the past inquiries set up after previous similar disasters is that we are unlikely to get a response from Central and Local governments that highlights the real reason for this latest avoidable tragedy.
More than likely, it will be a coverup of those who are technically culpable or above criticism of their ideological or spiritual beliefs.
I note the address of the the Welcome Bay slip became changed to Papamoa by Radio National and TV ONE.
That's Papamoa pronounced
" Paaapaaamoowaaa" so precisely by both organisations.
And it takes people like Doug Longmire and and the Herald to expose that the landslide risks had been long known about and for a brave man like AIister McHardy to warn the campers himself.
You forgot one Doug, Pike River, Coal Creek, White Island and Cyclone Gabriel, another extremely badly handled tragedy.
But at least we got Paaapaaamoowaaa so perfectly spoken
The media seem to confuse Papamoa with Welcome Bay.
They are two different areas. Welcome bay is inland, "behind" Tauranga.
Papamoa is the coastal strip - an extension of Mount Beach.
I lived in Mount/Tauranga and owned a property in Welcome Bay.
This will be another opportunity to set up an Enquiry which will take an Appointed Board many Months/Years being another TIT on the Taxpayers Udder.
We have three mad distractions adding to ignorance about the cause - Maori mythologies , the climate cult and the supposed curse of colonisation. .
All these have deterred us from having real science applied to the situation -geology and soil mechanics products of STEM subjects .
These specialist areas not only build up the economy but provide advice on safety.
I was a teenager when I lived in Abbotsford , Dunedin in 1960s and the slips that occurred there and destroyed many houses , in the process of building the motorway were also avoidable if those building the road had not ignored advice on referring to geological reports on the lubricant nature of the clays in that area.
Lessons were learned from this but are we going to get people like Rod Kane , listened to in this dark age of mythology , cult and Marxist ideology which takes center stage and crowds out the truth ?
This is occurring in not just the Earth Sciences but all areas of learning which are sliding downhill in rigour, resulting in a morass of stupidity and ignorance. Gaynor
Oh Lordy, now folks who are discussing factors that contribute to landslides are being labelled as trolls.
It appears the tragic loss of human life was not an "accident" in this instance.
It would seem the Tauranga local authorities and emergency services have much to answer for.
"Emergency Management Minister Mark Mitchell characterised those spreading misinformation as "trolls" and didn’t believe they reflected most New Zealanders."
Oh, I see !! It's only "trolls" who would be critical of council ignoring all warnings !!
Quote from Matua Kahurangi:-
"in June 2023 Tauranga City Council approved the removal of eight large exotic trees from Mt Maunganui, including a Holm Oak, pine, poplar, chestnut, and macrocarpa. The work involved helicopters and mechanical disturbance on steep terrain. At the time, the council itself acknowledged that such disturbance could trigger slope instability. The risk was neither unknown nor theoretical. It was recognised and accepted. These trees were not removed because they were unsafe, diseased, or failing. They were removed to comply with the 2018 Mauao Historic Reserve Management Plan, which mandates the progressive removal of exotic species to restore the maunga to a culturally preferred ecological state under the direction of the Tupuna Maunga Authority."
My daughter used to work for DOC. She was telling me in those days they had dedicated staff constantly carrying out geological monitoring of dangerous areas, as well as other dedicated staff whose sole job it was to monitor wildlife in their protected habitats, such as Kiwis. Apparently most of these jobs all disappeared.
Some of the tragedy in Tauranga can be directly attributed to the woke management of the region.
I had hoped that sensibility would be restored after the last Council election.
However that was not to be - Mahe Drysdale as the newly elected Mayor decided that there were not enough Maori representatives, so he put unelected, paid Maori onto the Council with full voting rights.
So much for democracy !
Did any of these people have an appropriate background which gives them an awareness of the geotechnical strata of the region ?
In fact, anything truly useful - mumbo jumbo in te reo isn't.
There are a number of historical records of landslides in the region.
Why were potentially dangerous sites allowed to be occupied ?
So much for science and education.
Well written Rod. I’m one of the Kiwis that Rob Muldoon referred to years ago helping out across the ditch. The same mindset applies here as fires rage and properties lost, with wildlife being burnt due to green policies and woke politicians spruiking their educated views. Barney C
Luxon is on about misinformation of a racist nature about all this. Kicking for safety
I guess the council engineers were, as nowadays are so many, in fear of cancellation. It is what renders partnerships and co management a walkover for maori. Get a reputation for questioning maori and all dealings with and with maori influenced, as are now most management, will be made a misery. Prudent to tag along. Seems somebody should have been alert to the early detailed study. But mayor and many Councillors are new, and it too technical for Councillor reading years ago.And quite likely there is no one remaining on the management staff with a clear memory of. And being holiday time any such staff aay not have been aware of or interested in local events hour by hour. Slips are very fluid and flow far onto quite falt land. Without detailed study everywhere, enormous areas could b seen as at risk
Similar tree removal actions in Auckland on one of their "Mount" suburbs (Mt Eden I think). Local iwi were given management rights and promptly removed all exotic trees, much against residents wishes (Obviously their views were ignored). Atleast the removal could have waited until native ones were established, but decolonisation was too important.
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