ON 14 FEBRUARY, PRIME MINISTER Chris Hipkins labelled Cyclone Gabrielle, in its severity and breadth of damage, the most significant weather event New Zealand has seen this century. The flooding – whole towns and vast swathes of farmland – defies belief, unlike anything we’ve seen here before.
Gabrielle came hard on the heels of massive flooding in Auckland, which the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research described as a one-in-200-year event, delivering, via an atmospheric river, an entire summer’s worth of rain within one day. Many in West
