After the storm

ACTION STATIONS: Thirty-five years on from its foundations after Cyclone Bola, the Trust Tairāwhiti Eastland Rescue Helicopter remains committed to servicing even the most isolated parts of its community. Picture supplied

They had no comms and some were cut off from their own homes but, post-Cyclone Gabrielle, members of the Trust Tairāwhiti Eastland Rescue Helicopter team swung into action . . .

AS one of the crew, and base manager ,for the Trust Tairāwhiti Eastland Rescue Helicopter, Kelley Waite knew she’d have to get to Gisborne from her home in Wairoa well before her shift started on Monday, February 13.

Weather warnings were in and the approaching Cyclone Gabrielle was gathering momentum.

“I was only seven in 1988 when Cyclone Bola landed but I remember our property on Tiniroto Road flooding, and people being cut off everywhere,” she says. “That just was not a risk I could afford to take.”

Supported by the Eastland Helicopter Rescue Trust, the Gisborne service currently operates with a team of nine — three pilots; three critical-care flight paramedics; two crew; and one crew member/base manager. A pilot, a paramedic and a crew member are rostered on 24/7.

“Though we got the warning alert on Monday night, like everybody else did, it just sounded like rain so we settled in for the night,” Ms Waite says.

“It wasn’t until the morning that we discovered we had no phones, no paging system, no internet or any other means of contact with the outside world.”

Even if they did have communications, Civil Aviation Authority rules meant the crew would not have been able to fly in the worst of the conditions.

So their first response was to check in on St John ambulance staff, who had been flooded out of the ground floor of their building in Bright Street on the banks of an overflowing Taruheru River, and had access to comms via a Fire and Emergency NZ command vehicle.

They then managed to contact their own Search and Rescue Ltd (SRSL) operations manager, in Palmerston North, to let them know they were all right but would have to communicate via satellite phone.

“Those first couple of days were really frustrating, even though we’d learned our region did not have the rescue demands like in Hawke’s Bay,” Ms Waite says. 

“But we still had to be available to respond to medical and trauma events, especially with the roads having been smashed in the storm.”

First responding to Rescue Coordination Centre (Lower Hutt) alerts from personal locator beacons, the crew were in the air by Tuesday morning, attending a medical event in cyclone-damaged Tangihanga.

“That’s how we proceeded for the next couple of days, and contact with Ambulance Communications and St John over the radio, and with Gisborne Hospital, identified where people needed care and had to be brought to Gisborne.

“But we’re aware that communications after the cyclone were certainly not ideal so SRSL is reviewing options for all its bases to ensure we are all able to operate BAU (Business As Usual), whatever the circumstances.”

By the evening of day three, Wednesday, the Tairāwhiti crew weren’t on their own: the Rescue Coordination Centre had swung into action to send support from Otago Southland Rescue Helicopter (two helicopters, seven crew) while SRSL sent relief crew from Hawke’s Bay Rescue Helicopter’s Taupō base.

“Critically, the Otago crew brought with them a Starlink kit and, while on a job to Rotorua on the Friday, managed to pick up one for us to keep,” Ms Waite says. “That meant we could restore some of our own comms without drawing resources from our community, where connectivity was a struggle for everyone.”

Between them the crews and craft worked non-stop, checking on rural residents, delivering critical medical supplies, flying people in need of medical attention to hospitals in Gisborne and the Bay of Plenty and, of course, responding to emergency medical and trauma events.

“The whole reason for our existence is to help people, especially those who are far from the assistance they need, or cut off,” Ms Waite says.

“We were just lucky that, in the hours after the storm, most people in our region were able to self-evacuate or had support from neighbours and whānau to help them.”

Meanwhile, nearly six weeks later, Kelley Waite is among the thousands of people still affected by the impacts of Cyclone Gabrielle.

At the end of her first four-day shift she had to be dropped to her Wairoa home by helicopter, and in recent weeks her mother has shouldered the lion’s share of caring for her pre-school daughter.

“It’s been horrible being cut off from Kenyzie and, because of the condition of the roads, we haven’t been able to see my father at his rest home in Hastings,” she says.

“We always need the support of our families but it’s at times like these it really hits home that, without them, we just couldn’t do the jobs we are here to do.”

Powerful connections of early days remain strong

REWARDING: Patrick Willock, chair of the Eastland Helicopter Rescue Trust. Picture supplied

FOR Patrick Willock it is the memory of Cyclone Bola, and the lessons learned, that keep him going as chair of the Eastland Helicopter Rescue Trust. 

Not that he was even in Gisborne 35 years ago this month, when that storm devastated the region.

Then a Whangara farmer, Mr Willock was at Lake Waikaremoana with a group of school students when Bola made landfall.

“But even over there it was pretty big . . . we had to boat the kids out of the hut, and walk down to a local marae where we spent the next few days until we could walk over a bridge and get everyone on a bus,” he says.

“We had to leave vehicles, boats, everything, but that was nothing compared to what we saw when we got home.”

Back then, after Ruatoria helicopter operator Denis Hartley spoke on Radio Ngāti Porou about his flying experiences during and post-Cyclone Bola, a huge fundraising response led him to set up the Helicopter Rescue Trust (East Cape).

The service was originally run as a partnership with Mr Hartley’s agricultural helicopter business but by 2000 it had been renamed the Eastland Helicopter Rescue Trust service and its base moved to Gisborne.

That was when Patrick Willock came on board, taking on the role of chair a year later.

“It’s a very rewarding thing to be involved in because we are working to provide equity of care to people who really need it, when they really need it.”

It all comes at a cost: since 2017 the life-saving service has operated with Trust Tairāwhiti funding support of $350,000 a year, leaving around $300,000 to be raised annually by the Eastland Helicopter Rescue Trust.

“We’re even more committed to that as the events of the past few weeks, after Gabrielle, highlighted just how fragile our infrastructure is, particularly on the East Coast, and how our service is even more important than ever.”

People did not get to choose when something was going to happen so the crew operated 24/7, 365 days a year, Mr Willock said.

“And that’s critical because, without the rescue helicopter for search, rescue and medical assistance, many people simply don’t have a Plan B.”

While the service’s patch reaches from Mahia in the south to Lake Waikaremoana in the west, and north to Te Kaha and Ōpōtiki, it was originally established by East Coast people for East Coast people and Mr Willock says those powerful connections remain.“We’re constantly working with St John and Fire and Emergency NZ services up the Coast and the support and input from mana whenua help ensure the service is appropriate for the community.

“They’ve been there for us from the beginning and, as long as we are able, we’ll always be there for them.”