Cyclone Gabrielle: Help from the outside - rural communities rally

The accessible Cyclone Gabrielle damage on Swamp Road in Puketapu. Rural communities around the country are rallying to help the stricken farmers of Hawkes Bay. Photo / Warren Buckland

Shearing legend Sir David Fagan and businessman Jim McIndoe in their hometown of Te Kūiti have linked arms in one of the early strategic and possibly long-term outside responses to Cyclone Gabrielle farmland recovery in Hawke’s Bay.

The two are planning a silage and hay run in the King Country, using Sir David’s “front paddock” as a receiving point for the feed, with McIndoe utilising Hawke’s Bay contacts to provide storage in Hawke’s Bay to facilitate timely distribution.

Also being collected are other items that may be needed in rural households, and Sir David says it’s just the start.

Also being organised are trucks and a tractor which will be available to transport, and if unloading and loading is an issue, he says a package is being put together to be as self-efficient as possible.

By Wednesday morning, seven trucks had been made available, and shipping containers for such goods as non-perishables.

“This will be going on for months by the look of things,” he said. “So, we will get better at it as it goes along.”

“You just can’t comprehend what they’re going through,” said Sir David, who lives on the outskirts of Te Kūiti, which was itself isolated with a Civil Defence state of emergency as floodwaters surrounded the town, inundating some urban properties, amid rainfall of 160-200 millimetres on January 28.

It was a “small one,” says Sir David, who has “always lived on a hill” and has largely come through unscathed in weather events, apart from “a few slips and a few broken fences”.

Sir David said there would be “hundreds” of similar rural community responses mounting around the country, particularly in the North Island. Among them is cartage, storage and logistics company J Swap, which has already carted donated feed to meet specific needs in Hawke’s Bay, and is also working with other companies and services in receiving donated goods, which include such things as fencing supplies, at the RSA in Matamata – home base for the company, which has a fleet of 200 trucks nationwide.

Company director Andrew Swap said: “If people have got something to donate, we’re happy to get it there.”

Two other companies had provided B-train trailers dedicated to the operation, able to be loaded up, and Swap said: “It’s a case of being ready to hook up to a truck tractor unit and go. Anything we can do, we will do it.”

There's not much left at Whirinaki, north of Napier. Photo / Warren Buckland

Ironically, in 2020, the company was also involved in similar operations in Hawke’s Bay – transporting between regions to help farmers combat the impact of the drought.

Earlier this week, Federated Farmers national vice-president Wayne Langford, of Taupō, expressed the feelings of “utter dismay [and] devastation” among the communities of Hawke’s Bay, Gisborne-Wairoa, Northland, Coromandel, and Waikato hit by Cyclone Gabrielle and preceding cyclonic enemy Hale.

“It’s a bitter irony that plenty of farms in Otago and Southland are heading into their third summer/autumn drought in a row,” he wrote.

He said the priority of Federated Farmers this week has been on reaching out to isolated farms with comms, electricity and roads access severed to get an accurate handle on their needs.

“The Kiwi way is to reach out to help those affected,” he said.

Federated Farmers has set up “buttons” on its website enabling people to lodge donations and offers of labour, machinery, generators, etc.

“The fact is, it may be a week, even weeks, before farmers hit hardest can work out what would help them most, and be in a position to call in labour help or our ‘Farmy Army’,” he said.

“Problem is, by then the sun may well be shining again, and many of those unaffected will again be wrapped up in their own busy lives.”

Thus he urged: “Let’s do our best to keep in mind those whose livelihoods have been smashed. Click the donation or Volunteer Registration buttons on the opening page of our website.”