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''.
''Our citizens need to be prepared to assist our guests.
''My plea to businesses is to make sure you have a business continuity plan, because as a civil defence officer, I won't be in a position to come around and vacuum up all your clients you might decide to dump on the street.''
Without a plan and staff trained to follow it, a business also put itself at risk.
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.
''I don't want to be a doomsayer ... but the reality is that in the past month we've had fires, and two tropical weather systems come down from the Pacific and impact on the South Island.
''We have this spectacle, in Nelson and Takaka currently, where people were so unprepared for those events - despite a lot of warning - it resulted in panic buying from the local store.''
For residents, preparedness meant taking self-responsibility and preparing a kit of essential items that was ready to go if they needed to evacuate their home.
It also meant knowing where your nearest civil defence centre was, he said.
