Cyclone Gabrielle: Aid from above thanks to Taupō company

Lakeview Helicopter's appeal for donations was heard by the Taupō and Turangi community, with supplies piling up from Sunday onwards.

A Taupō helicopter company has so far spent more than $35,000 on fuel to deliver much-needed supplies to rural areas of Hawkes Bay affected by Cyclone Gabrielle.

With roads and bridges badly damaged or destroyed, accessing rural communities has proved difficult and there are still communities without reliable power, water or phone lines.

The urgent need in rural communities was immediately obvious to father and son Brad and Mike Williams, who operate Lakeview Helicopters along with fellow pilot Piers Harvey.

The company does lots of work in Hawke’s Bay, so they were among the first to fly people and supplies into the towns and rural locations affected and see the devastation first-hand.

Mike Williams said it was difficult to explain the extent of the devastation.

“People have no idea. People need help down there, they can’t get out to buy food.”

There have been no shortage of Taupō businesses and organisations ready to help, including real estate business Bayleys and the Taupō Family Centre. Both had organised donations and supplies but needed them delivered.

Lakeview was happy to help, said Bernice Williams, who runs HR and admin for the company. Once they got stuck in, they soon hit upon the idea to collect donations for their own delivery.

“We were already doing jobs for other companies, either to look at the power lines, drop people in rural areas, or deliver supplies.”

It took time for emergency organisations to get to affected communities, and even then rural areas weren’t necessarily seeing the same volume of aid as urban areas like Napier and Hastings.

“It’s not getting distributed as often to the farming communities.”

She put out an appeal on social media asking for supplies, and was shocked at the response.

“A lot of people got in touch with us.”

With the post garnering almost 100 shares on Facebook, people began flooding in with donations of food, toiletries and baby supplies.

“It just blew me away, I wasn’t expecting it.”

“We planned one drop, because we thought we’d get enough donations for one drop.”

Lakeview was planning at least two more missions due to the volume of goods donated.

They were grateful for the help from the community so far, but had shared their bank details on Facebook in the hopes of getting a helping hand with the rapidly mounting cost of fuel.

Mike Williams said monetary donations were as important now as food and other consumables.

The company spent $35,000 on fuel in the week following the cyclone, with the three helicopters used each costing more than $500 an hour to run.

“We can do a certain amount, but we can’t keep doing it forever.”

For now though, the team were happy to be doing their part to help in the aftermath of the chaos.