In the second instalment in a series of diaries about Cyclone Gabrielle’s aftermath in New Zealand, Anna Rankin describes the fears, rumours and unexpected effects of a lack of internet
t is difficult to record historical events that will in time determine policy decisions and economic outcomes, and the lives of those affected, while events are still unfolding. There are the quick impressions – men wrestling escaped bees on a roadside deep in flood waters, a flattened cornfield marked by the shape and force of the torrent, a mud-soiled child on a stoop, wide plains transformed into lakes, the eerie chime of a stuck train signal.
A flood-damaged house in Wairoa. The New Zealand town was cut off for three days after Cyclone Gabrielle ripped through the region last month.Four days after the flood, the local council administered its usual daily update – printed on A4 paper given the lack of telecommunications – with a decree to boil all water. All flood water was to be treated as contaminated as the wastewater system was overloaded.
That there was, for a week, no internet connection allowed for a markedly different experience than might otherwise have transpired. The centre of the town became atypically populated; people converged on the council grounds seeking information, supplies, conversation, hopes of an online connection. It would have been an entirely different experience had there been the internet to scroll for information.
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