John MacDonald: Why haven't we learned from our landslide history?

Before the weekend, questions were already being asked as to why the campground at Mt Maunganui wasn’t evacuated before last week’s devastating landslide. That will be one of the things looked into as part of this independent investigation the local council is initiating. There will be all sorts of questions and, hopefully, a lot of answers.   But there is one thing we know for sure already. We don’t need an investigation to tell us that what happened on Thursday is a wake-up call for all of us. As tragic as it is, it is a wake-up call. But will we learn from it? I'd like to think so. But, based on history, I’m not so sure. Because I was very surprised to find out over the weekend that, historically in New Zealand, landslides have been more deadly than earthquakes. Tom Robinson is a senior lecturer in disaster risk and resilience at the University of Canterbury, and he was saying at the weekend that landslides have claimed more lives than all of our earthquake disasters. That landslides are our most deadly hazard. I had no idea. Which tells me how little we have learned from previous landslides. And, even though we’re all gutted by what’s happened at Mt Maunganui, chances are we’ll all move on.  We’ll keep doing things like removing trees from hillsides - something that people in the Mt Maunganui area are already making noises about. We’ll have this council review and we’ll hear that, yes, perhaps the early warnings raised by locals on Thursday morning should have been acted on sooner. But that will be about it. I remember growing up in Dunedin when the Abbotsford landslide happened. It was 8 August 1979. That was major. More than 60 houses lost. 600 people evacuated. Thankfully, no fatalities or major injuries. The Abbotsford landslide happened after people in the area had been saying for years that there were signs of land movement. Cracks on people’s properties - inside and out. And then, on the night of 8 August, away it went.   That was 46 years ago. So, if we didn’t learn anything from that experience, what hope that we’ll learn anything from this? Or more to the point, what hope that - whatever we learn - leads to the kind of change and accountability needed to, at the very least, limit the chances of it happening again? LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.