Far North Kahika (Mayor) Moko Tepania helps Northland Red Cross chairwoman Nancy Kareroa-Yorke load one of 32 donated generators onto a council ute. Photo / Peter de Graaf
Far North Kahika (Mayor) Moko Tepania helps Northland Red Cross chairwoman Nancy Kareroa-Yorke load one of 32 donated generators onto a council ute. Photo / Peter de Graaf
Mayor Moko Tepania’s televised appeal for help for cyclone-hit areas of the Far North has paid off handsomely with 32 brand-new generators on their way to the district’s far-flung welfare centres.
Last week Tepania appeared on current affairs programme Seven Sharp to show the nation how Cyclone Gabrielle had affected already struggling whānau.
The TV crew also followed the kahika (mayor) to Tauteihiihi Marae, near Kohukohu, where locals had set up an emergency centre to feed and house the displaced — but with no power, their communications were minimal and volunteers were cooking over an open fire.
At the end of the show, Tepania appealed for donations of generators to help isolated communities in future disasters.
The following day Tepania’s inbox and phone were jammed with offers, including a pledge of 32 generators from the New Zealand Red Cross.
The first two have already been deployed to Whangaroa with three more handed over in Kaikohe on Tuesday by volunteers from the organisation’s Kerikeri branch. The rest are due in the coming days.
“I’ve been fielding calls of support from up and down the country, which has been so great,” Tepania said.
“Red Cross came to the table straight away, which was just phenomenal, but I’ve also had private individuals saying, hey, we saw the show, how can we help?”
Seven Sharp presenter Hilary Barry told Tepania she was keen to get 33 generators for the Far North — one for every community-led welfare centre in the district.
“But we said, ‘we’ll take whatever we get, even if it’s just one generator’. So it’s just been phenomenal.”
Northland area chairwoman Nancy Kareroa-Yorke said the New Zealand Red Cross was already supporting communities affected by Cyclone Gabrielle when the organisation’s secretary-general saw Tepania’s appeal for help and made the call to pitch in.
Thirty portable generators, each with an output of 2000 Watts, would be distributed around the Far North, while two larger generators would be allocated to emergency centres likely to cater to the largest numbers of people in the most vulnerable areas.
Tepania said he had been impressed by the way Far North communities sprang into action as soon as the district went into “cyclone mode”.
The extreme weather of recent months had shown that marae and other welfare centres needed to be more resilient in the face of natural disasters.
In the long term that meant more solar power and satellite internet, but short term it meant generators to ensure back-up power.
With more cyclones developing in the tropics, Tepania said people were feeling nervous — but having generators available gave them confidence they could get through.
They would also be vital in the coming months as lines company Top Energy carried out a series of planned power outages to allow permanent repairs to the network. In some cases repairs had been temporary so power could be restored as quickly as possible.
Far North Kahika (Mayor) Moko Tepania with Northland Red Cross chairwoman Nancy Kareroa-Yorke (right) and volunteers from the charity’s Kerikeri branch. Photo / Peter de Graaf
Tepania said he would “breathe a huge sigh of relief” once he knew everyone’s power was back on.
A few isolated communities across the Far North were still without power, more than two weeks after the cyclone hit.
Some of the donated generators could be deployed straight away to help those households, he said.
Only one house in the Far North had been red-stickered — meaning it was legally uninhabitable — but that did not take into account the many homes in the Far North that were unconsented, or smaller than 30sq m, but had suffered serious damage.
Tepania said many people had been reluctant to put their hands up and say they needed help because they knew the damage in Hawke’s Bay and Tairāwhiti was even worse.
However, the Far North was fortunate because it had been “adopted” by four district councils around New Zealand that had escaped the cyclone.
Waitaki, Tasman and Clutha in the South Island and Waipā in the Waikatō were all fundraising for the Far North as part of the Adopt a Community initiative launched by Local Government NZ.
As of 6pm on Tuesday, Top Energy reported just four households were without power in the Far North but it was not clear if those outages were cyclone-related.
Northpower, which serves the Whangārei and Kaipara districts, said it was in the final stages of repairs with about 50 households still without power. Most of those were due to damage to individual customer service lines.
Far North Kahika (Mayor) Moko Tepania helps Northland Red Cross chairwoman Nancy Kareroa-Yorke load one of 32 donated generators into a council ute. Photo / Peter de Graaf
