21 Feb - 27 Feb
LOCALLY OWNED SINCE FOREVER
No 889
LAKES WEEKLY BULLETIN
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17 IN 8 SI
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Get Ready Get Thru If it wasn’t for the pictures on the news and accounts of sheer terror from friends and family living up North, it would be hard to believe the destruction left in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle given our current glorious summer. But it is real. Very real and heart-breaking the devastation caused to the lives of our fellow Kiwis. Some natural disasters come out of nowhere and some have more lead time. Prior preparation saves lives and livelihoods. However, the scale can be very hard to read in advance particularly when a weather pattern is literally fluidity in motion. Swinging and circling. Who is going to wear it the worst and who is going to be spared? A question of life and death. Adding to New Zealand’s woes is a level of unpreparedness compared to places in the world who live with such large-scale storm systems annually. To date, such events like Cyclone Gabrielle are few and far between in New Zealand. The last of this scale was Cyclone Bola in 1988. We also get plenty of more regular weather “events” that still carry with them a heap of damage. We have active volcanos and are known as the Shaky Isles for a very good reason – we sit on the Pacific Ring of Fire. And that’s no joke. What has happened from the Hawkes Bay and Bay or Plenty, up to Auckland and the Far North is a tragic reminder to every New Zealander living in every corner of these islands of our human world fragility. Please donate to a Cyclone Gabrielle relief fund (if you can). Link below. These are our people. Please dig through your top drawer in the kitchen or hallway and pull out a pamphlet that households in our district received from Otago Civil Defence in collaboration with QLDC and the Otago Regional Council. The initiative was called GET READY GET THRU. Every neighbourhood in the district got their own plan with Civil Defence Centres, Visitor Welfare Centre, Vulnerable Population Sites, even a Tactical Site Map of your township. It’s quite impressive, and a comfort to know some people in our community care about you. But wouldn’t it be nice to help yourself too, and your family, friends and neighbours? It doesn’t take a superhero to help out in a civil emergency. Just a sense of awareness for your environment, what it might throw at you and how to GET READY GET THRU. If you want to be the kind of person who can help yourself, your family and your community when the next event comes our way, then go to this link, scroll to the bottom and find your neighbourhood (or the closest/most relevant) and download the PDF. Save it somewhere you won’t need the internet to access or even better be a prepper geek like me, print and pop in your emergency grab bag. Whatever you do… be prepared. https://www.qldc.govt.nz/community/emergency-management Red Cross Cyclone Gabrielle disaster fund https://www.redcross.org.nz/support-us/our-current-appeals/new-zealanddisaster-fund/ Scott Stevens
LUMA returns to Queenstown Gardens in all its glory this King’s Birthday weekend bringing illuminated art, sculpture, sound production, live music and performances across the three days. See story on page 6.
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