A modern malady

The floods & devastation in the Hawkes Bay area of NZ is cataclysmic. Few deaths but it is a lesson for when solar flares strike. The big one has yet to point as we happen to pass. This is from a hero who delivered an old spare jalopy to one seriously affected farm.

There were consequences of no power that I hadn’t thought of. You couldn’t use a credit card to pay for anything as no power to the machines. Only cash accepted. But you couldn’t get cash out as no power to ATM machines that dispense cash. All banks closed as no internet. Local cellphone stations were all out, although it was possible to get intermittent reception from distant transmitters from the tops of hills. So a lot of people had absolutely no idea what was going on and had no way of letting people know that they and family were safe (or not). Few people have the old landlines anymore.