Nature’s brutal reminder; the tragedies we don’t see coming

Sunday, 25 January 2026

Tracy Watkins is editor of The Post and Sunday Star-Times.

OPINION: I have watched the video from the Mount Maunganui camping ground disaster too many times; I can’t shut out the horror of that moment.

A sliding sea of mud, screams, caravans toppled.

It is the shock of the familiar. A scene we all know; summer at the beach, the tent, the caravan, the sun - and then tragedy unfolds.

We need no reminding that we live in an extreme, volatile, and deadly part of the world.

Earthquakes and wild weather have claimed hundreds of lives; there have been mine explosions, shipping disasters, and plane crashes.

In the last two decades, we’ve been reminded that nature can be particularly brutal here: the horror of the Whakaari/White Island eruption, and the Christchurch earthquake, which killed 185 people and left permanent scars on the city.

The Pike River mine explosion left 29 dead and taught us a harsh lesson about the laxity of our rules and regulations. In Christchurch, too, there were shocking failures. Our “she’ll be right” attitude to risk came back to haunt us.

We complain now about risk-averse councils and government departments, accusing them of being too “nanny state” - forgetting that it usually takes a tragedy to write the rules.

We don’t yet know the full story of the Mount Maunganui tragedy. What we do know is that there was a terrible loss of life. Six people are dead; some died heroically trying to warn others. Their families have suffered an awful tragedy. That is all we need to know for now; we are all heartbroken for them.

The wild weather claimed other lives elsewhere; Two dead in Pāpāmoa after a slip, while searchers last night found the body of a 47-year-old man who was swept away in Warkworth flood waters.

It may be that every death was unavoidable; just nature doing what nature does. But after every event like this, questions must be asked. Were there known risks? Was there adequate warning? Were civil defence and emergency services sufficiently prepared?

There are already troubling questions that require answers: were warning signs ignored? Should campers have been evacuated? There had been a series of smaller slips that morning. A local who took photos at that time said things were still moving. He told a camper: “This doesn’t look good.”

Tauranga District Council closed surrounding tracks after mutiple nearby slips. But there was no order to evacuate the camping ground.

There had also been various reports into the stability of the Mount, which had been plagued by slips, including one in 1977 in the same area, above the holiday park and hot pools.

Why did none of this raise an alarm bell?

Tauranga Mayor Mahe Drysdale has ordered an independent review; it is necessary, and important that it happen. But it will be cold comfort to the families grieving the loss of loved ones.

Under-estimating mother nature seems to be in our national psyche.

After Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland Anniversary floods, we learned hard lessons about the fragility of our infrastructure. Our emergency response effort was found wanting. We learned that help may not always come in time, and that it is incumbent on everyone to be prepared to survive without assistance, possibly for days.

The purpose of asking questions after such events is to ensure the same mistakes aren’t repeated.

It seems that in Auckland, some of those lessons have been learned. Mayor Wayne Brown noted on social media that, while hit hard by record rainfall, the city stood up well to last week’s weather bomb.

“Our infrastructure fared better this time around, showing that the resilience work we’ve been doing is beginning to pay off,” he said.

Good.

This weekend marks three years since the Auckland floods; the city wasn’t prepared then. At the time, catastrophic weather caused widespread devastation in what was New Zealand’s costliest non-earthquake disaster. That record was overtaken by Cyclone Gabrielle just two weeks later.

This latest weather event suggests that this volatile extreme could be our terrible new normal.

And yet, shockingly it seems lessons from Cyclone Gabrielle still haven’t been learned; after last week’s flooding, forestry slash was shown piled up on farmland and beaches. This is despite aggressive enforcement action take by councils in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle in an attempt to force the forestry companies to clean up their act.

What other lessons have we failed to heed?

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