Editorial: No time to be complacent

OPINION: For the second time in just a few months, coastal New Zealand, including the South Canterbury coastal belt, has been placed on high alert about the possibility of a tsunami. And for the second time, the result has been not too much to write home about.

Which, let's be absolutely clear, is something for us all to be deeply thankful for.

Despite the fascination that saw so many people, on both occasions, drawn to vantage points along our coastline to watch for what might be coming, the fact that we didn't get hit by anything substantial is a blessing.

The danger, though, is that this could become a little like the story we all heard as children of "The boy who cried wolf". If we have more false alarms, it's inevitable that New Zealanders will start to become blase about such warnings, which could be disastrous.

Because it's surely inevitable that, at some point, one of these warnings will turn out to have a little more teeth than the last two have had.

And if a substantial tsunami arrives when some have decided they can laugh off the warnings, that is when there will be real problems.

The devastating Indian Ocean tsunami on Boxing Day in 2004 rightly put the whole planet on alert about just how much death and destruction such an event can cause, and had countries that might conceivably be in the firing line of future tsunamis re-examining their warning systems.

The positive effect of that is that we're now much more likely to get an early warning of the possibility of a tsunami hitting our coast.

What we need to be wary of, as civil defence co-ordinator Lamorna Cooper has said, is complacency. It only takes an individual to be wrong once about the validity of a tsunami threat for tragedy to hit.

In that context, while being careful to laud the response of local civil defence personnel to the threat yesterday, and their use of the media to get the message across, it has to be said that it's a little curious that signs detailing the closure of the Caroline Bay car park did not explicitly instruct people to stay away from the bay.

Saying that people know to listen to the radio for civil defence information, and that the area can be cleared by police if it becomes clear a big wave is on the way seems to be leaving a little too much to chance.

Sure, it's hard to enforce a complete closure of an area as big and open as Caroline Bay, but making it completely plain that the area is closed and explaining in unambiguous terms to those who might be tempted to ignore that closure what dangers they could face is surely called for in such circumstances. An awareness that our authorities are taking warnings seriously might be just what it needs for the ordinary man, woman and child in the street to adopt the same approach.

- © Fairfax NZ News