On Friday morning, a team of volunteers from Taskforce Kiwi arrived to support the northern Hawke’s Bay community.
After unprecedented flooding threatening lives and property, the Wairoa Mayor Craig Little declared a state of local emergency last Wednesday.
Taskforce Kiwi (TFK) founder and national director Richard Adams said the organisation provides direct assistance by helping with physical tasks such as clearing debris and rubbish and carrying out impact assessments.
“While we have certain things that we specialise in, we’re also able to do whatever is required,” Adams said.
“One of the jobs we’ve been doing is delivering firewood, for example, because people need to be able to try and dry out their homes and need firewood to do that.”
Taskforce Kiwi volunteers are former and serving defence and emergency services personnel. They are on the ground helping the Wairoa community after the devastating floods.
Most TFK volunteers have served in either the Defence Force or emergency services, providing relevant skills and experience for disaster relief.
“If you come from a defence or an emergency service background, you’re very mission-focused, very outcome-focused . . . so it’s about sort of getting in and trying to try to reach those outcomes as quickly as possible,” said Adams.
TFK has organised volunteer team rotations for the next few weeks, with 10 volunteers on the ground this week and a team of 15 replacing them next week.
Five days after the flooding, Adams said, “it’s quite incredible how much work this community has done in such a short time”, also noting the work done by the local council and the Civil Defence team.
Mattie Beattie, a civilian volunteer from Auckland who has been on the ground in Wairoa this week, said helping out was an “absolute no-brainer”.
“It’s just very real … the need in the community, right here, right now in Wairoa, is blatantly real,” she said.
In the two years since it began recruiting volunteers, TFK has done almost 10,500 hours of volunteer work. Wairoa is the organisation’s eleventh operation.
TFK spent 10 weeks in Hawke’s Bay after Cyclone Gabrielle and Adams said the current flooding devastation in Wairoa “feels very similar”.
“The main difference is just scale”, he said. “This is obviously of a slightly smaller scale, but that doesn’t take away anything from those who are trying to deal with it.
“So the damage is similar. You know, basically having to start from scratch with damaged homes.”
TFK will remain in the area for the foreseeable future providing whatever support the community needs.
Beattie said volunteers are “happy to be helping wherever we can . . . proving any assistance that’s needed”.
