Four out of five New Zealanders are completely unprepared for a natural disaster. In the Queenstown Lakes, that vulnerability is compounded by the 12,000 to 65,000 tourists there on any given day, the district's emergency management officer says. Trevor Andrews said the storms, fires and floods that had hammered the country in the past month had left him worried about communities' ''woeful level of preparedness''. There was a lack of awareness in Otago's major tourism areas that a natural disaster would leave thousands of visitors ''with no idea what to do''. The latest annual survey by the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management showed 82% of the population were unprepared for natural disasters, Mr Andrews said.

Source: Otago Daily Times February 23, 2018 16:07 UTC