Kerre Woodham: When did weather become such a big deal that it dominates the news? - Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

Speaking of the bad weather, it brings me to the emergency mobile alerts. The emergency mobile alerts came about because Fire and Emergency and the National Emergency Management Agency and other agencies including New Zealand Police, Ministry of Primary Industries and Ministry of Health use emergency mobile alerts to alert people if their lives, property or health are at serious risk.

I'm pretty sure they came about during Covid, I can't recall them before then you might, but I think it was pretty much a Covid response and that's continued to include any other times where lives, property or health are at serious risk. Over the past week.

Aucklander’s have received about four or five emergency alerts on their phones, and I'll tell you what, they give you an absolute conniption when they start screeching. You know it takes you right back, the adrenaline surges through, you think, fight or flight ... okay there's bad weather coming. Well, yes, a cyclone had been forecast to be arriving over the North Island. So, you would imagine with a tropical cyclone bad weather comes - thunderstorms, the potential for flooding.

And then the next lot of emergency alerts came to warn of the potentials of dangerous gases as a result of a recycling plant in a suburb of Auckland going up in flames and once that fire started, many, many suburbs around the fire were advised to stay inside and then another alert gave the all clear sometime later.

I do understand that Civil Defence is damned if they do and damned if they don't. Some Aucklander’s were asking why they weren't warned about the severe thunderstorms and deluges on the Friday night of Easter weekend. But surely,