Man who bought Puketapu Store opens it to ‘feed the people’ post-cyclone

Jaycen Maxwell has been selling whatever food and drinks he can to the community. Photo / RNZ - Tess Brunton

Tess Brunton of RNZ

A Hawke’s Bay man has not let Cyclone Gabrielle put him off buying a local store in a hard-hit rural area.

The day Jaycen Maxwell was meant to buy the Puketapu Store, the cyclone hit.

Maxwell and his partner faced a stressful few days of not knowing if the store or the house they bought were all right.

They spent the time packing up their lives in Napier without power, a working kitchen or showers.

Both buildings weathered the cyclone, and they moved in last week.

Families in Puketapu are still cut off with no running water, and they’re sharing generators for power. Some parts are still only accessible by helicopter or boat after the Dartmoor bridge and others were wiped out.

“Officially, we haven’t opened. We’ve unofficially been operating for the last three days with whatever we’ve had to sell, with hot food for people. Not everything, but just opening the doors,” Maxwell said on Friday.

The store on Dartmoor Road was where relatives lived when he was growing up.

He remembered popping in and out of the shop as a kid and was pleased to be back in such a close community.

“While we were setting up, getting everything ready, we had people calling in and asking, ‘Are you open? Have you got a hot pie? Have you got this? Have you got that?’ So it was like, ‘Hey, let’s feed the people’.

“So that’s what we did. We got hot pies in the oven. Drinks - they weren’t cold because we were still waiting on fridges from Auckland - so people were buying warm drinks and were just happy that [they] were wet.”

Residents were delighted to have access to the essentials - and icecream - once again.

The community support had been overwhelming, Maxwell said, and he was pleased that getting supplies had been fairly a smooth process.

“We’ve had a few hiccups where orders have been missed because roads have been closed and [the person delivering the order has] turned around. But we’ve communicated with each other.

“I’ve had to run into town a couple of times and pick up things - milk and bread - to get it out here so that people have it available.

“But generally speaking, it’s been okay. The only thing at the moment is we’re waiting for our coffee machine to come in.”