happy to be labelled woke<\/a> if it means New Zealanders are not losing their lives.<\/p>\nSpeaking to Morning Report, Little said Wairoa has been through disasters before and suffered greatly in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle.<\/p>\n
For this event, calling a state of emergency before it even hit simply wasn’t necessary, he said.<\/p>\n
Little said his district was well prepared for the weather event and forecasts were being watched closely.<\/p>\n
The cyclone was downgraded as it approached New Zealand and was considered a “low rain event”.<\/p>\n
From the intel he had, “we didn’t require it”.<\/p>\n
Little said calling a state of emergency causes panic amongst people – “there’s no doubt about it”.<\/p>\n
But he said he was confident Wairoa would be safe – and if it was necessary, he would have called a state of emergency when it was needed.<\/p>\n
The decision not to declare was made by not just himself, but agreed upon by elected members of the council.<\/p>\n
Little said residents were well aware of what was going on and a number of media releases and social media posts were shared.<\/p>\n
Hindsight was a wonderful thing, Little said, and a state of emergency had not been needed.<\/p>\n
“I believe it’s the last tool in the toolbox to use – not the first.”<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wairoa District mayor Craig Little. Photo: Nick Monro Declaring a state of emergency should be the last tool…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377739,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":["post-379194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379194","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=379194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Mayor](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/4K5BNHE_Craig_Little_jpg.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n