{"id":378455,"date":"2026-04-14T05:08:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T05:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/378455\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T05:08:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T05:08:08","slug":"mayor-stands-by-refusal-to-declare-woke-state-of-emergency-for-cyclone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/378455\/","title":{"rendered":"Mayor stands by refusal to declare ‘woke’ state of emergency for cyclone"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wairoa mayor Craig Little had doubled down on his decision to not declare a local state of emergency<\/a> during Cyclone Vaianu, saying it was unnecessary and risked causing panic. <\/p>\n

Cyclone Vaianu<\/a> tore through parts of the North Island’s East Coast over the weekend, causing evacuations and leaving thousands without power across the Bay of Plenty, Waikato and Hawke’s Bay.<\/p>\n

Little refused to join other Hawke’s Bay councils in declaring a local state of emergency ahead of the severe weather, telling Local Democracy Reporting yesterday that “we’re becoming woke as a country when it comes to states of emergency”.<\/p>\n

Speaking to RNZ\u2019s Morning Report today, Little said calling a state of emergency should be “the last tool in the toolbox to use, not the first”.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know why they think if you call a state of emergency, all of a sudden some magical event will happen for you and it unlocks everything,” Little said. <\/p>\n

“You do not need a state of emergency to be prepared. And we were prepared. <\/p>\n

“Our emergency operating service was stood up, all our services including and people affected were well aware of what was going on.”<\/p>\n

He said information received ahead of the severe weather event suggested conditions would “only bring high swells and high wind” and did not justify a state of emergency for the region. <\/p>\n

“We just didn’t require it. There were some areas that did require it, like a lot of the areas that were predicted to be hit hard. We weren’t predicted to be hit hard.” <\/p>\n

“Don\u2019t forget, you can call a state of emergency at any time if it gets worse.”<\/p>\n

Little reiterated he was confident that Wairoa was safe during Vaianu and said he would have called a state of emergency if was needed. <\/p>\n

“We didn’t want to panic people if it wasn’t necessary.” <\/p>\n

Ten states of emergency were actioned during Cyclone Vaianu.<\/p>\n

The number of states of emergency had roughly quadrupled the total number<\/a> issued across New Zealand over the past decade.<\/p>\n

Prime minister Christopher Luxon responded to Little’s comments during his address to media yesterday, saying he’d “happily wear a woke label if it means we didn’t lose anyone’s lives”. <\/p>\n

“I love Craig, I’ve spent a lot of time with him given he’s had some major weather events in Wairoa over the last few years,” Luxon said.<\/p>\n

“This was a significant event with 10 local states of emergency actioned. In a number of regions there were road closures, power outages and flooding.<\/p>\n

“I’d sooner be prepared than talking to you about an event that we were underprepared fo”r.<\/p>\n

The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including why now\u2019s the time to get the flu jab, and what made a controversial influencer storm out of an interview. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wairoa mayor Craig Little had doubled down on his decision to not declare a local state of emergency…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[20277,111,43,139,69,3393],"class_list":{"0":"post-378455","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-hawke-s-bay","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz","13":"tag-weather-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}