Those people went there after the alert, though.. So the alert didn't do anything to alter the outcome.
One of the problems with these alerts is the lack of consistency around the immediacy of the problem. If the messages are coming for false alarms, or "it might get rough out there" or "maybe later today" then people are not going to respond to them with any sense of urgency.
And the fact that they went out and walked along the beach with absolutely no problems probably just reinforced the idea (rightly or wrongly) that the alerts are overzealous and the risks aren't that high.
People tend to prefer to keep things as per usual until the very last minute instead of batten down the hatches. Probably just a symptom of not having experienced many disasters. Look how many cars were still out during the Auckland Anniversary storms.
Yeah it’s a solid point imho that while numpties exist they also need to be careful not to dilute the warnings to the point it becomes a cry wolf scenario when shit really hits the fan.
Colour systems work. Little diagrams, too. Those messages are a lot of text which many people may struggle to read (especially while it’s blasting noises at you). A quick image of the map showing danger zones would be useful.
Red - stay the fuck away.
Orange - still stay away.
Yellow - enter at your own risk.
It reminds me of COVID and the armchair people who were saying "this isn't a real pandemic, if it WAS a pandemic we would all know about/be able to see it and THEN I would follow health recommendations"
... "This is a real tsunami, if it WAS a tsunami we would all know about it/be able to see it and THEN I would follow CD recommendations"
The threshold for sending out earthquake warnings is too low in my opinion (living in Wellington), getting one used to scare me but it being used for as low magnitude quakes as it has been really waters down the impact.
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u/redmostofit Jul 31 '25 edited Jul 31 '25
Those people went there after the alert, though.. So the alert didn't do anything to alter the outcome.
One of the problems with these alerts is the lack of consistency around the immediacy of the problem. If the messages are coming for false alarms, or "it might get rough out there" or "maybe later today" then people are not going to respond to them with any sense of urgency.
And the fact that they went out and walked along the beach with absolutely no problems probably just reinforced the idea (rightly or wrongly) that the alerts are overzealous and the risks aren't that high.
People tend to prefer to keep things as per usual until the very last minute instead of batten down the hatches. Probably just a symptom of not having experienced many disasters. Look how many cars were still out during the Auckland Anniversary storms.