It's a significant investment which could ultimately help save lives - Tūrangi St John Ambulance receiving more than half a million dollars to help with the rebuild of its facility, following new earthquake strengthening laws.
"It's a result of the Christchurch earthquakes where some emergency response buildings collapsed and the
vehicles weren't able to respond," said Fraser Lake of St John's Turangi committee.
"We have had to have an engineer's report done, checking that our garaging is up to earthquake standards. We found out it wasn't."
Turangi wasn't the region's only St John branch impacted by the new regulations. It took the Ōhakune branch more than a decade to raise the funds needed to upgrade their building - a long and difficult fundraising process which Tūrangi can now entirely avoid.
"The grant is incredible, in terms of that impact," said Turangi District Councillor Tangonui Kingi. "Because otherwise it would have been a long road to generate that income, not impossible, but it worked out to benefit everyone.
