Blowing my Top

At the moment I am sitting on the periphery of a volcanic eruption.

The volcano first blew its top last night and wiped out most of Mangere. The stench of methamphetamine hangs in the air. Most of the population escaped because seismic warnings allowed Civil Defence and other authorities to evacuate much of the affected area. In fact there are no reported deaths, few injuries and essential services in Mangere such as Kentucky Fried Chicken have already been restored. Burger King has a whole new inject to its Smoky Bacon flavour ASH is thanking everybody for the free publicity. Nevertheless trauma counsellors are over-stretched and the fall-out literally and figuratively will continue for many years to come—most of the evacuees were sent to Hamilton.

Of course this is an exercise—a two-day Civil Defence exercise in which I am involved as Rodney’s Civil Defence communications controller. Remarkably it’s gone extremely well and I am drawn to the conclusion (you’ll be glad to know if you live in Mangere) that it would go equally well for real. At least I hope so; the tourist benefits of being the Pompeii of the Pacific won’t be seen in our lifetime.

But I do have a couple of questions about this exercise. Why choose Mangere? I quite like Mangere and a lot happens there already. Why not choose Mt Roskill or Mt Albert where nothing does? I could also suggest Hamilton but apparently the fault-line, like everybody else, avoids it.

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