Tauranga’s Avoidable Disaster
This article was written by Rod Kane from New Zealand, and has been shared with permission.
Article by Rod Kane. Source - Facebook
Note from Penny Marie: I am reposting this as it’s such a vital conversation that must be addressed. Time to put an end to ‘anti colonial’ rhetoric and policies, and stop kowtowing to cultural bullying and mismanagement. We are all born equal. We are all living on this land. We are ALL kaitiaki of our whenua.
Tauranga’s avoidable disaster
Before the trolls start I’m going to put my credentials up here. Apart from a lifetime interest in geology and landforms, and having an NZCE in civil engineering, neither of which counts for much, what does count in my opinion is the fact that I owned and operated a geotech contracting company specialising in slip remedial work for nearly 20 years. I have worked on and under more dangerous slips than I care to remember. More than once I had to make a run for it.
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.
Please share this Substack. It’s also on my X and Rob’s Facebook.
New Zealand severe weather events this week
Heroic actions described by witness at Mount Maunganui landslide - Stuff, 23 January (with my friend Alanna Ratna who was onsite at the time of the tragedy)
Mount Maunganui landslide: Eyewitness says danger visible before campers buried - NZ Herald, 23 January.
Names of victims released - Stuff, 24 January.
Matching bracelets, dress-ups and beach days: Teens holidaying together lost in slip - NZ Herald, 24 January.
Elsewhere in NZ
Wild weather in pictures: North Island reels under torrential rain, flooding - RNZ, 21 January.
Parts of East Coast evacuated over slip risk - NZ Herald, 24 January.
Mahurangi River search: Body of swept away driver found - RNZ, 24 January.
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Hopefully the pushback starts here. The Iwi (and Council) clowns who decided on this could start by apologising to Italy and Sweden as well as NZ for being fucking morons.
Another tragedy that could have been averted if common sense was running the show. When practicality and reality collide with ideology and agendas, harm and death are the outcomes.