A week of commemoration marking 12 months since Cyclone Gabrielle’s devastation of Hawke’s Bay on February 14 last year has started with a volunteer appreciation day at one of the major venues from where help came in the days and weeks afterwards.
The event, recognising services, volunteers and families, was held at Tomoana Showgrounds, Hastings, on Sunday, with Hastings Mayor Sandra Hazlehurst saying afterwards the focus of the week is on people who lost lives and property “and still have a long way to go to recover.”
“Through both the response and the recovery our region united with a determined spirit; our people worked together to support each other, especially those in extreme need,” she said, listing the array of emergency services, and the volunteers from such units as surf lifesaving, volunteer search and rescue, and helicopter pilots, and “local groups and individuals from schools, marae, churches, community centres and more, who used whatever they had to save the lives of so many, and then shelter and feed our distressed people.”
