We all know what happened next

Hilary Barry is a good stick. On the night before Cyclone Gabrielle properly hit Auckland she posted on her Facebook page that she was ‘here for late night chats if you’re anxious’. More than 8,000 people responded, from Northland, the East Coast, Hawke's Bay and Auckland. In the early hours, they wrote of being nervous, of worrying what would happen if they lost power, of their fragile health, isolation, medical needs, concerns for family. Some wrote of being in homes that were still drying out from the del...