Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 1938. CALAMITY AND OBJECT LESSON.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 April 1938, Page 6

Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 1938. CALAMITY AND OBJECT LESSON.

QN the far from complete information that is meantime

available, the calamity of flood damage that has occurred in Hawke’s Bay stands out as of staggering magnitude. There are preliminary estimates of damage to public works, roads and bridges that may cost £200,000, or perhaps much more, to repair, apart from the liabilities of a similar kind incurred 'by local bodies. In some areas one-fifth of the pasture land is declared to have been lost, by slips and the silting of valleys, much of it permanently. There are reports from many quarters of homes and farms devastated and ruined. Plainly very much more than a local problem is involved. The Minister of Public Works (Mr Semple) seems to have exaggerated little, if at all, in stating that the occurrence was one of the worst calamities that had befallen the Dominion.

Only when a complete and detailed survey has been made will it be possible to envisage the actual proportions of the task of rehabilitation —unhappily it can be only partial rehabilitation —that waits, and of the measure of national assistance that must be given.

It may not be out of place meantime to suggest that the disaster which has descended on wide areas of a rich and fertile province has its lesson for many parts of the Dominion, not least for the Wairarapa, and should profoundly influence public policy and the outlook of the community on flood protection and cognate problems.

There are some special features about the Hawke’s Bay disaster, notably the extent to which the shattering of hill-tops by the 1931 earthquake facilitated and paved the way for enormous and far-reaching flood damage. In a considerable degree, however, the devastation that has lately occurred in Hawke’s Bay illustrates the inevitable operation of forces that have been unleashed over a great part of the Dominion. The loosening of hill soil by the destruction of forest cover on immediate or commanding areas and the filling of river beds with debris —a process that results in exposing ever-increasing areas of low-lying land to attack by flood—are much in evidence virtually all over.the Dominion. It is one of the commanding facts of the existing situation, also, that a great deal of what remains of our essential water-protection forest is still exposed to heavy deterioration and damage, particularly by the ravages of deer and other imported animals and by fire.

Though awakening and enlightenment have made headway in recent years, there is still a very general failure to give even serious thought to questions of forest protection and of action to limit damage by floods. flu the comparatively recent past it was very commonly held by men calling themselves practical that forest improvement and afforestation deserved little attention because, they said, any resultant profits would be reaped only in a remote future.

The last-mentioned contention was in the narrowest view erroneous. It is still more important, however, that failure even during the last decade or two to institute a really vigorous policy of forest conservation and development has laid the Dominion far more open than it need have been to a succession of disasters more or less comparable to that which has just occurred in Hawke’s Bay.

When the full figures of damage done and loss suffered in Hawke’s Bay are made known, an impetus perhaps may be given to a methodical and purposeful policy of setting what limits are now possible to flood damage in many parts of the Dominion. Practical measures of the kind that are being extended on a great scale in the United States and elsewhere include afforestation, or even the covering with rough and poor growth of watersheds that have been laid bare, the conservation and storage of water that otherwise would become a purely destructive agent, and protective works planned boldly from a territorial standpoint and with an avoidance of flip folly of attempting competitively to protect limited areas piecemeal from periodical inundation. The most effective and profitable action that can be taken in this country to limit future flood damage is to give all the protection that is possible to our remaining watershed forests. The whole question has as compelling claims to serious and practical attention in the jWairaarpa as in any part of New Zealand.