Pacific Helmets chief executive David Bennett (left), account manager Michaela Walker (centre) and sales manager Lee-Anne Glanville-Rothman hold helmets donated to Ukraine. Photo / Bevan Conley.
Pacific Helmets chief executive David Bennett (left), account manager Michaela Walker (centre) and sales manager Lee-Anne Glanville-Rothman hold helmets donated to Ukraine. Photo / Bevan Conley.
While others send arms to help the Ukraine war effort, a Whanganui manufacturer is sending boxes of safety helmets.
Pacific Helmets manufactures a variety of safety helmets and exports them. It has distributors in the Czech Republic and Poland which have been drawn into the war effort, chief executive DavidBennett said.
"Our Polish distributor went to the border and picked up some refugees. The Czech distributor asked if helmets could possibly be sent quickly."
The helmets Bennett has seen in television footage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine are old fashioned German-style ones.
"That's very typical for that part of the world," he said.
Last weekend Bennett and others rounded up all the helmets they could spare - 250 to 300 of them. They were tender samples, discontinued lines and some that were slightly damaged or had paint colour problems.
All the donated helmets have a common construction, and are suitable for fires and rescues. Photo / Bevan Conley.
All had the same basic design and were suitable for use in bush or structure fires, or by paramedics and rescuers at disasters.
Bennett got a message on Sunday night to say the Czech government was prepared to be involved. If he donated the helmets, the Czech government would pay half of the cost of airfreighting them there quickly - 5500 euros (NZ$8828).
"The Czech distributor is only 400km from the Ukrainian border, so it's fairly convenient and most of the traffic will be coming towards them," Bennett said.
Pacific Helmets hasn't contributed helmets to a war effort before, but its helmets do get asked for when there is a disaster.
"When the Oklahoma City bombing happened in the [United States] the FBI asked for some helmets to be sent urgently."
That was in 1995. The bombing killed at least 168 and wounded hundreds of others.
Helmets were requested in the next US terrorist attack as well, the suicide mission that hit the World Trade Centre in New York City on September 11, 2001. A Royal New Zealand Air Force plane took a cargo of helmets to New York State.
