She’ll Be Right: Why Students (Don’t) Prepare for Earthquakes

Words by Keying Huo-Smith (she/her)

When strong winds are blowing, I can feel my flat swaying beneath me. I’ll laugh this off with my flatmates, talking about classic windy Welly weather and the pillars that have been holding up our lounge since 1910. I definitely won’t think too deeply about what those shakes mean, for both the stability of my house and my mental health. But ask anyone what another hallmark of living in Wellington is, and chances are they’ll say earthquakes.

Wellington is in a unique (read: unfortunate) geographical position, sitting right on top of a group of parallel fault systems. These faults are created by the boundary between the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates, running just south of the city. The two plates get ‘stuck’ on each other, build up tension over time, and then suddenly jolt past each other, releasing energy and causing an earthquake.  

You’ll often hear jokes or see TikToks about Wellington’s ‘overdue’ earthquake. Not to scare you, but they’re not entirely wrong: GeoNet predicts a 10-60% chance of an earthquake of magnitude 7.0 or greater happening in Wellington in the next 10 years. For context, the 2011 Christchurch earthquake had a magnitude of 6.3. This is a high enough risk to be talking about, so why aren’t we running to hardware stores and supermarkets to prep for an inevitable disaster? 

To answer this question, I spoke to Melanie Roundill, who is working towards a PhD in Health Psychology. Her PhD investigates why so many low-income, renting students in Aotearoa aren’t prepared for an earthquake. Melanie says students lie at the intersection of many overlapping factors, all influencing how we respond to perceptions of risk. “They can’t work full time, they’re living in poor housing, they don’t have an awful lot of money, and then […] culture and ethnicity, and even gender has a role.” 

Wellington is notorious for its awful flatting, and students can almost always expect the delightful combo of A4-sized mould patches and a high price tag when flat hunting here.  Melanie pinpoints the power imbalance between students and landlords as one of the key reasons we can’t properly prepare for earthquakes. Renters don’t feel comfortable approaching landlords about basic repairs, let alone their flat swaying in the wind. If you’re new to flatting or new to Wellington, this becomes even harder. And what’s the point in preparing emergency supplies or securing furniture when you’re just going to move out in a year and be back at square one?

Underneath all of this, our cultural expectations of flatting shape our response to risk. University students are willing to accept substandard flats and high rent in name of the classic ‘student experience’. It's also a generational problem. Our parents and grandparents tell us stories of how hard they had it, how we chose to study here, and this ends up being internalised according to Melanie. But “they shouldn’t have to be surviving. They should be able to live.” 

Melanie cites New Zealand’s accepting and optimistic culture as a key contributor to this attitude. In psychology, optimism bias is the idea that people think they are less likely to experience bad events (like an earthquake) compared to the average person, and more likely to turn out okay if the event does happen. Hearing this took me by surprise, but also made a lot of sense. How many times have I heard my friends say things like “it won’t happen to me”, or “she’ll be right”?

Students have it pretty rough, which means emergency preparedness comes second to paying our rent on time. Is there anything we can actually do? We all know to ‘drop, cover, and hold’, but this only goes so far in a serious earthquake. The Wellington Region Emergency Management Office (WREMO) has plenty of ideas and recommendations. Most of these, though, simply aren’t practical for students. To Melanie, “They kind of put it for the bog-standard New Zealander who’s got money, rather than all of these other people who are going to most likely be impacted […] with vulnerabilities that will be exacerbated in the event of an earthquake.” I can’t imagine any student renter drilling their shelves into the walls or storing a week’s worth of water each. 

Even so, Melanie says that anything we can do is better than nothing. She encourages us to try to put some extra food to the side and store water in old soft drink bottles or ice cream containers. But “coming from an understanding perspective, I know that’s not possible for everyone. Don’t put yourself out for that week or month to be able to store [food] for later—you still need to look after yourself in the now.” 

One of the most significant things we can do to prepare without sacrificing our current needs is to lean into community. Two weeks ago, the University of Wellington Emergency Response Team (UWERT) ran a training exercise, using stretchers and ladders to practice getting people out of the Kelburn campus after an earthquake. The Student Volunteer Army was formed to coordinate recovery efforts in the aftermath of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake. VUWSA’s advocacy service is also working to make the Kelburn campus a community emergency hub for the aftermath of a disaster. As powerful as these organisations are, efforts shouldn’t necessarily have to be led by students. The Wellington City Council, WREMO, and VUW should be doing more to organise preventative action and educate students on earthquake safety standards in rentals. 

Something we can do right now is make friends with our neighbours. These relationships could be invaluable after a disaster where modes of transport or communication are cut off. But doing this will require fighting our natural psychological biases that tell us that everything will be okay, and that it’s ‘uncool’ to talk about these kinds of worries, Melanie says. We need to “[change] ‘she’ll be right’ to ‘she’ll be right, but I need to prepare for it to be okay’.”