As someone who lives in Auckland, Professor Steve Matthewman hasn’t personally experienced too many natural disasters — until last month’s floods.
All he’s willing to say about that is that although it’s been harrowing for many Aucklanders — and people in other centres who also got hit by the unprecedented deluge — it’s probably not been quite as harrowing as many other disasters in New Zealand’s recent history. It goes without saying, however, that strong leadership at such times is crucial, he says. “Ideally disaster communications should be early, authoratitive and accurate. Delays, contradictory messaging and blame-shifting are all counter-productive.”
In his professional life, Matthewman knows quite a bit about disasters. The University of Auckland sociologist is a specialist in disaster studies, and recently co-edited and authored the book A Decade of Disaster Experiences in Ōtautahi Christchurch.
If disaster sociology is your thing, there’s probably no better place to go than Christchurch, says Matthewman. That might sound ghoulish, but it isn’t really, he insists — the point of disaster sociology is to make sense of events in order to be better prepared for the next ones.
Since the devastation wrought by the Canterbury earthquake sequence of 2010-11, Christchurch has become a living laboratory for investigating the resurrection and rebuilding of cities and communities.
The earthquakes kicked off a difficult decade of disasters in and around Ōtautahi, including the March 2019 mosque terrorist attacks which left 51 people dead, suburban
