Pictured is Little Scissors hairdressers Katelyn Massey and Danica Ferguson with Bulk Line's Callum Schumacher
LITERALLY truckloads of goods have been donated by Ōtorohanga and surrounding communities to help with Hawke’s Bay’s recovery from Cyclone Gabrielle.
The storm ripped through New Zealand last week, causing unimaginable devastation in the Hawke’s Bay region and a climbing death toll which sat at 11 as this paper went to print, including two volunteer firefighters in Auckland.
Bulk Lines announced on Thursday afternoon its intention to set up “care boxes” at its sites around the country where people could donate non-perishable goods to be transported to its Hawke’s Bay depot and distributed from there.
They received more donations than could fit in two 20ft shipping containers from the King Country and Bay of Plenty alone.
Bulk Lines manager of safety, people and culture Greg Gillard said the response was overwhelming.
“The sense of community spirit through the King Country, Taranaki and Bay of Plenty regions has been awesome and people have been so generous.”
Not only were people donating goods, but they were also volunteering their time in sorting and packing the donations.
Walking paths had to be formed through the piles of donations at the Ōtorohanga site.
Many rooms were entirely unusable because of the sheer number of donations from the community.
“Initially we did not really know what the response would be from our local communities however from the number of calls and contacts via social media that were quickly received we could see there were a lot of people out there who wanted to help those in Hawke’s Bay,” Greg said.
The donations came from individuals and organisations alike, he said, with local companies Ballance Agri-Nutrients Ōtorohanga, Farm Source Ōtorohanga, Supa Shavings and Countdown Ōtorohanga among others coming to the party.
Royal Wolf in Mt Maunganui donated the two containers for use by Bulk Lines in their mission.
Greg said the initial plan was to have the truck start in the Bay of Plenty, travel to Ōtorohanga, down to Taranaki and then across to Feilding before heading to Napier.
But with the containers chocka after just the Mount and Ōtorohanga, Greg said the team had to think up other options.
“There is a lot of leftover items in Ōtorohanga which we are now coming up with a plan to get to the Hawke’s Bay as quickly as possible.”
The first shipment left Ōtorohanga on Tuesday.
Little Scissors owner Leanne Massey offered her business as a drop-off site for donations and helped publicise the effort.
“We can’t sit back and do nothing. We had to do something. We’re all here getting on with our day as normal; they’re not.”
In the first 24 hours of word going out, they were inundated with donations of bedding, towels, brand new clothes, toilet paper and dog food, just to name a few.
“It’s just been amazing, this community is so generous,” Leanne said.
It was so generous the team had to create a cut-off date on Monday due to the volume of donations they received and their inability to store it all.
