If you're not in Auckland it's possibly hard to understand the scale of this disaster.
There were communities of traumatised families with young children in whole neighbourhoods South Auckland & out in West Auckland whose homes & streets were chest high in water.
They had no idea where to go, what to do to get some shelter in the storm, & couldn't get any advice.
The emergency phone lines were overloaded & for hours there was just silence from the Mayor & his office.
I don't think you get it, this isn't about the delay in issuing the State of Emergency, it was about the mayor using the media & social media to let people know where they could go to get shelter, get dry, get their children out of the torrential rain, something to eat, what areas were underwater, which main routes were impassable, which Marae & Churches had opened their doors, how the 40,000 people at Mt Smart could get back home in the storm, what public transport was operating & what wasn't & so on.
There was no advice, no information, no leadership, just a vacuum so it was chaos.
And now he's blaming everyone else.
He's just yet another over-confident white male of very average capabilities whose self belief propelled him to the top, being tall helps him too though its totally irrelevant.
I've seen it so many times, very average types, men with no self doubt, full of their own hubris, rewarded with senior positions over much better qualified people, often women.