Amidst the drama of the weekend's tsunami alert, there were some strange responses and odd stories from people in the Bay.

It is flabbergasting to witness how little some people really understand about tsunami. You'd think after all the coverage of the Boxing Day Indian Ocean disaster, the potential for disaster would be quite clear.
Partly the problem is the habit of the media and some officials to keep calling it a 'wave” which doesn't accurately describe a tsunami. The word ‘wave' has connotations of a sea swell, or a breaker on the surf beach. Or something the Queen does with her glove.
It's pretty clear to the Average Joe, that tsunami is more accurately a powerful, sustained surge. The height is less important than the sustained, prolonged force behind it. The flood ‘tide' can be 100km long behind the wall of water. Some commentators during the weekend used 'surge” which portrays more accurately the potentially deadly floodtide affect that we saw devastate Thailand.
Civil Defence Minister John Carter didn't mince words.
'New Zealanders who didn't heed the national tsunami warning in the wake of the Chilean earthquake, need to realise this was a serious event.
'A national warning is not issued lightly. Amid reports of people going to the beach or spectating, we also had reports of people getting caught in the powerful water surges that make up a tsunami and rapid water-level rises in some areas.”

On the water
Police and surf clubs did a brilliant job of keeping beaches mostly clear, but it was a different story out on the water. It was surprising that all the boat ramps weren't properly closed for the day, especially since the extent of the threat to the NZ coastline was known in the small hours of Sunday morning. Many boaties had already launched before dawn to fish the change of light, blissfully unaware of the events unfolding.
We watched, bemused, as mid-morning, a chap in a fluoro vest put cones across the Plummers Point boatramp, presumably to 'close” it, then left the scene. No sooner had he driven off, than the first boatie, returning from his early fishing trip, pushed the cones aside and retrieved his boat, leaving the cones off the ramp. There followed a stream of boat traffic, up and down the ramp, taking no heed of the supposed closure. Meanwhile, across the estuary at Te Puna, the ramp wasn't even closed. The man in the vest never made it with his cones.
So does this mean the lives of the boaters on the west side of the estuary are more valuable than those on the east? Either the ramps are closed – properly – or they're not.
While most took note of Civil Defence advice and stayed off the water and away from beaches, there were plenty of blasé boaties who knew of the threat, but headed out fishing regardless.
I spoke to some at the ramp who reckoned they'd be fine in the harbour. Good luck to you, I thought. They obviously hadn't seen the images from Northland where harbours had been turned to washing machines, with one metre surges rushing through at up to 12 knots.
One boatie was heading out to an island, and wasn't fazed by the tsunami threat. 'We'll be fine on the island. And at low tide we're going for a feed of pipi.”
I would have thought digging pipi at low tide during a tsunami alert was a particularly silly idea. However, when I enquired whether they also knew there was a shellfish ban in place, due to high levels of paralytic shellfish poisoning, they replied 'yeah, last time the guys had a feed of raw ones, their mouths went tingly. So now we cook them up in fritters and they're okay.”
This is despite health authorities warning that cooking doesn't diminish the paralysing effect of the toxin.
Righto, I thought. So if the tsunami doesn't get you, the shellfish will!
I had images of them being swept out to sea, while paralysed.
While it might be an overly cautious approach, only the stupid flout such bans. They'll be the first to be bitching 'we didn't know” to authorities and calling for compensation when someone dies; or lining up for ACC when it all turns to custard.

Too top it all off
Some people had the opposite extreme view of the tsunami, and took the threat very seriously. A few carloads headed directly for the highest point of land they could find. We heard a story about a family who decided the best place to wait out the alert was on the Kaimai summit. Yep, that should do it. The tsunami surge was expected to be up to a metre. The Kaimai summit is 508 metres above sea level. That gave them a spare, aww, 507 metres buffer zone, should the tsunami be a tad over estimates.
The really silly part of this story, however, is that the family had an argument, the son got out of the car and walked off and it ended with the police called to sort it out.
He was quite safe from the predicted less-than-a-metre tsunami surge, but in dire risk of being flattened by a 30-ton, five-axle B train of pinus radiata.
Talk about a waste of everyone's time.
Elsewhere, some people took the opportunity for some cheap shots at Telecom's woes over its new mobile network. A sign at the cricket announced: 'Newsflash – Tsunami covers more of NZ than XT.”
Meanwhile, the smart members of the public were logged onto www.sunlive.co.nz which is the best place to get up-to-date info these days, especially in these situations.
The SunLive team were updating the situation constantly from before dawn. While some radio stations had some occasional reports, (between a lot of music and inane jock jabber) SunLive brought the complete story as it unfolded – from all sources – including Civil Defence, councils, police and other emergency services, and photos and video from the coastline and around the region.

Parting shot
The last word from the tsunami saga however is this lighter moment, reports grandfather Ross, who tells the story of the phone call warning from grandson, aged four and half:
'Grandad, Grandad, there's a salami coming!”