WAVE OF WARNINGS

Brad Bishop, 29, has declared he would now prefer to be taken out by a tsunami and a barrage of tidal waves than receive another violently loud Civil Defence emergency alert on his cell phone. 

Bishop, who lives in Greymouth, said the nightmare began yesterday afternoon when the first warning pinged through his phone like “someone had fired a flare gun into my eardrum.”

“That first one at 4pm was a bit of a shock, but you kind of expect it, given the earthquake in Russia. I figured, alright, cheers for the heads-up, good to know there’s an earthquake thousands of miles away in a country I’ll never go to,” said Bishop, still visibly shaken. 

“But then I was rudely woken up this morning by another one. I was starting to think, are we about to go to war or something?” 

While the official alerts were sent out at 4:12pm yesterday and again at 6:30 this morning, a mysterious “glitch” in the system meant Bishop and countless others were treated to an impromptu symphony of sirens during the wee hours.

“I would genuinely rather be swept away unexpectedly by a rogue wave than be violently ambushed in the early hours of the morning by that bloody haunting alert system,” said Bishop, who compared the sound to “a car alarm inside a concrete tunnel being played through your skull.”

“Like, if I’m gonna die, just let the wave take me while I’m still asleep. Let the water from the tsunami gush over me and take me pleasantly. Don’t wake me up first, that’s just cruel.”

More to come. 

The post Local Bloke Would Rather Be Hit By Tsunami Than Get Another Civil Defence Alert appeared first on The Whakataki Times.

AVOIDING REEFS AND BUDGET GRIEF

The Royal New Zealand Navy is reevaluating its priorities after the hydrographic survey ship HMNZS Manawanui went from proudly sailing the Pacific to becoming a new underwater feature off the coast of Samoa. 

 “We might have saved ourselves a whole lot of trouble if we’d known there was a reef right where we were heading,” 

“Imagine a GPS that could say, ‘Caution: Stunning coral reef ahead—turn left immediately!’ Captain Yvonne Gray mused, mainly relieved that all 75 crew were safe after the weekend’s mishap.

Deckhand Kegan Smart chimed in with his opinion. 

“Turns out, maybe a basic GPS would have been a good investment. They’re only, what, $200? A lot cheaper than another $100 million boat aye?”

The Navy has now turned its attention to the salvage operation and has even recovered the black box, which, as luck would have it, was not much help. 

“The last recorded message was something like, ‘Are we supposed to be this close to land?’” Captain Gray said, shaking her head as she recounted the ship coming to an abrupt grinding halt in the ocean.

More to come. 

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The post Navy Agrees That Investing In Affordable GPS May Have Saved Them A Hundred Million Dollars appeared first on The Whakataki Times.