Oh dear. That’s awkward. Twas a weekend of weird events and catastrophes. First we had one fifth of our Navy hit a snag – searching for an undersea reef – “I’ve found it Captain!!” and then sink. Ooops. A $100,000,000 oops, it seems. I mean, to lose a ship in battle is one thing, but to lose a fifth of the entire Navy during peacetime is another achievement entirely! And what is worse is that it was our salvage vessel – and now it lies, unsalvageable at the bottom of Samoa’s coral reef system. We are the very definition of a Mickey Mouse nation. It would be hilarious if it was not so pathetic.
And then we have out Foreign Minister going to the UN and saying that the grown-ups should stop and listen to the little ones. Hmmmmm. Methinks that New Zealand’s luck, pluck, and Don’t Give a Fuck attitude has run out.
Exploding volcanos killing tourists. Earthquaking cities, flattening 101 students in a language school and turning them into meat patties. Suffering one of the worst slaughters of a white-power terrorist worldwide because we didn’t think it could not take place here. Sacking 13% of the civil service and then asking the remaining people to come into work and stop hiding away at home, and spend some money on our dying retail scene, only to be told “No, shan’t!”. Destroying not just our commercial news TV3 but also our “state” news TV One. Closing down our Library, our Town Hall, our Civic Square, our Council Building, our theatres all at the same time, so that as a city of Culture, we suddenly have none and then wonder why our city has lost its Mojo. But at least we still have our Mojo coffee shops.
Having our Air Force planes routinely break down more than they routinely fly. No Air Force to speak of. No strike fighters, no trainers, a collection of museum-era Poseidons Orions that need to be put out to pasture. A massive fleet of Army LAVs that we cannot fit onto our aging air freighters, so we can’t move anything like a LAV around our country, other than one at a time, with the wheels off. Ferries that have their propellers “fall off” in Wellington harbour. Ferries that routinely waft around at sea and occasionally run into the sides of the Sounds for unknown reasons. And now, after both major ferry companies losing power while crossing the Strait, we are now sinking our own Navy for shits and giggles, also it seems, because we “lost power”. It is beyond a comedy routine. It really shouldn’t be happening.
So to look at a more relaxing subject, how well did we do during the weekend’s 5am wake-up call, a 5.7 magnitude quake? Well, pretty good apparently – I had some things fall off shelves (one book, one jar of Vegemite), because I am in a non-base-isolated apartment building, as are most people in town.
There are only a lucky few, who live in a base-isolated tower, the wonderful new Victoria Lane Apartments, which as the developers proudly tell us, is the country’s very first base-isolated apartment building. And how did it fare, this technological, expensive marvel? Apartments started at a $million a pop. Must have worked well?
Errrr, ummmm, it seems that it was “vibrating” (according to just one resident, it seems, despite being 11 hours after the actual quake) and had to be evacuated for several more hours, on a cold, wet, southerly night. I am not sure whether I should laugh or cry. Was that the base isolation working better than expecting? Is it lead-rubber-steel isolated, or is the building on the new-fangled curved dish bearings? Or does it have viscous dampers to stop it wobbling? Whatever it has, it sounds like it needs some tweaking. Anyone want to spill the beans? How was it in the massive cantilever?
Couldn’t have happened at a better time – from Scoop Wellington. . .
“News from WREMO
For the first time in over 20 years, New Zealand Response Teams (NZRTs) from across the North Island are together in Wellington this weekend to test their ability to respond to a large scale emergency.”
https://wellington.scoop.co.nz/?p=164242
So it was all just a training exercise then?
Code name “Exercise Poseidon” – and for those of us old enough to have seen the film “The Poseidon Adventure”, about a ship that was holed, and capsized, and sank, this does seem indecently close to the truth for the weekend. I’m hoping that the NZRTs immediately left their cozy conference in Trentham and went out on a recce around Wellington? Perhaps they even assessed the vibrating building ?
I prefer the more recent reference in the Netflix show KOAS which re imagines Greek myths,
With Cliff Curtis is Poseidon, who is described in Mashable as stealing
“Every scene he’s in as the bored, indulgent Poseidon, lounging about on his superyacht, The Trident”
While Den of geek call him “a superyacht crime boss kind of guy. “- great to check out
He appears from episode (3) –
Too much coffee Nemo? I would not have taken you for a sabre rattler, but to be fair, your lament for NZ’s Ruritanian defence capability should exclude the Poseidon maritime aircraft. You seem to have got them mixed up with their aged predecessors, the Orions, which were retired last year. The Poseidons are brand new and allegedly state of the art:
https://www.nzdf.mil.nz/nzdf/our-equipment/aircraft/boeing-p-8a-poseidon/
Perhaps they can use one to find the Manawanui?
Poseidons? Orions? Some of us are sitting in the watery shallows, some of us are looking at the stars…
A bit of Oscar Wilde for you, Starkey….
The Texas trainer planes aren’t too shabby either (although don’t have the ‘cool factor’ or their jet brethren.
https://www.nzdf.mil.nz/nzdf/our-equipment/aircraft/t-6c-texan-ii/
Indeed. So we can train pilots, but then we have no Air Force to speak of, just an Air Farce.
And so we then export them, in the finest manner of a reverse 501, to Australia for their Australian Air Force, or to Britain for the Royal Air Force. Or, I guess, to Air New Zealand, or onto another retraining as a helicopter pilot. I believe we have 5 helicopters in the new NH90 Squadron? While 5 helicopters are definitely better than none, I seem to recall that they cost about $100 million each. About the price of one Manawanui? That can’t be right, surely?
Yes – so, we (NZ) bought 8 NH90 helicopters for $770 million = $96 million each.
They came in hugely over budget, should have only been $65 million each.
You could tell how screwed we got on that contract, when we actually bought 9 Helicopters,
But stripped one for parts because it was cheaper than buying spares from the manufacturer …
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/new-nh90-helicopters-launched
NZ had little choice and the Manufacturers knew it, it was heavily rumoured that Cabinet (PM Clark and DEFMIN Goff) wouldn’t buy Blackhawks..
(Bahrain bought 9 Blackhawks at the same time for $208M USD (less than $500m NZD)
The mystery thickens even more – so, we had 9 choppers, we used one for parts so then we had 8, but Defense Minister Crusher Collins was quoted on Jack Tame’s intelligent TV show (a rare thing, that) as saying that we had 5 choppers now – so have we lost 3 choppers in under a decade? Crashed them into a hangar? Lost at sea? A fireball of smoke? Or is it that we can only afford 5 chopper pilots and so therefore we have only 5 operational pilots? I don’t want to say anything in case our enemies (who they?) are reading / watching / listening, but now would be a good time to invade NZ, as we really are pretty much a sitting duck. Any half-decent superpower could literally take us out with a pocketful of shrapnel.
There is definitely something wrong with our seaworthiness !
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/350444012/bluebridge-ferry-crashes-wharf-picton
But so far, no one has offered up an opinion on why the building was supposedly vibrating for 11 hours…
I don’t think it was… only 1 person triggered the evacuation…..
I’m guessing that they were “sensitive” to earthquakes and “felt” something and pulled the fire alarm switch …..
Its all a storm in a teacup,
This is what I have heard (from a resident). One resident felt something at 10pm on Sunday. They suggested that some occupants have higher expectations for this building over others.
Having spoken to some of the engineers who attended the call out, the individual who could feel the vibrations was apparently clearly under the influence of something.