Posts by Matthew Poole
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Susannah Shepherd,
I just thought Huebner’s Twitter feed showed an interesting sense of priorities – and not what I’d expect/hope to see from a NZ diplomat in corresponding circumstances.
Don't forget that diplomats just relay messages. Getting USAR out of the US requires approval from FEMA, a bloated bureaucracy even before it was subsumed into the ultimate bloated bureaucracy - DHS. So the Ambassador, assuming he knows what USAR capability is available, must first determine that there is an offer to be made. There's no diplomatic egg quite like the diplomatic egg that follows an offer that must, unfortunately, be rescinded because, well, the offerer shouldn't have made the offer because it couldn't be fulfilled.
An NZ diplomat would be in a similar situation were the bureaucracies reversed, though in NZ's case the Ambassador to Washington likely has the cellphone number of the Minister of FAT and the PM and can short-circuit all the proper channels to get an offer available.
Things with Aus are so close that the offer will be PM to PM during a personal, direct phone call. That relationship is not shared with the US. -
Just watching the interviews with Key and Parker from 1, and I have to agree with the conclusion that it's legit rather than superimposed green screen. The light levels on the background keep changing as the dust blows around, which plays merry hell with the camera's auto-light settings.
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Susannah Shepherd,
I seriously hope they summoned the USAR teams before that.
You mean "offer assistance"? Given that Key said we've been offered USAR assistance by the US and Aus, and accepted, I presume that takes care of what you want to see. Really want to know who else is offering USAR TFs, though. There's a lot of resource out there internationally, and five TFs plus the community teams is really not enough for the current situation.
Speaking of USAR teams, there's a lot of disrespecting of TF1 going on. All the talk is of USAR team (or teams) being flown in from Auckland, which is TF3, but nary a mention of the foundation Task Force from Palmy.
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Gareth Ward,
If it's 65 people now, it'll be triple figures by Friday. I don't think we'll get to thousands, certainly hope we won't, but it's going to be days before rescue teams finish sweeping the city just to determine how many buildings have collapsed and need to be searched by rescue dogs.
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Steve Barnes,
how this was possible in a City that has recently been through an earthquake and hasn’t even started recovery
Natural forces equivalent to more energy than that released by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear explosions combined generally don’t respect human concepts such as “started recovery”. This was possible because the city’s on a couple of fault lines, and we haven’t even worked out how to predict occurrence and severity of an earthquake never mind how to prevent them.
It was made worse because “hasn’t even started recovery” is true. All the weakened buildings were subjected to forces that would’ve been iffy if they were fully intact, never mind their current state. The only way this could’ve been avoided would have been complete evacuation of the entire city. And then what do you do with the better part of 400k people? -
Hard News: Welfare: Back to the Future?, in reply to Danyl Mclauchlan,
[redacted]
That's not worth responding to. -
Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Paul Williams,
I figure Goff just happened to be there
Yup. Whether he was arriving or leaving is irrelevant, the comments from his press secretary made it clear that they were at the airport when the quake occurred. If that's not an incredible coincidence, I want to know why he hasn't killed the betting market.
On a more serious note, we've accepted the offer of a heavy rescue team from Australia and will be evaluating further offers. Given that the PGC building alone will consume NZ's entire Urban Search and Rescue (we'll be hearing the term USAR a lot) Task Force resource (we have three, TF1 in Palmy, TF2 in CHC, TF3 in Auckland), we're going to need a lot of international USAR assistance to deal with this one.
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
it wasn’t rush hour, and it didn’t trigger a tsunami.
Actually, rush hour would've been better in some ways. Fewer people inside buildings. At rush hour, the PGC building would've been mostly empty, for example. It's a very mixed blessing.
As for a tsunami, being the epicentre means the wave radiates outward. Christchurch would've been safe. -
Hard News: Welfare: Back to the Future?, in reply to Richard Wain,
And as Key flies in, plays hero, promises billions (but no tax increases to pay for it, mind), and watches his poll ratings go through the roof. You really couldn't plan for this.
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Ross Mason,
The Sept 4th one was truly an “unusual” event with no deaths
The time of day really helped with that one. In countries with construction standards, quakes that happen during hours of darkness tend to be less-serious from a people safety perspective than ones that happen during daylight hours when people are at risk of stuff falling on them. Sadly, today's one was about the worst possible case, being a summer lunchtime with many buildings weakened from September and all the intervening shakes.