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Mark Taylor/Stuff
Luke Firmin has been delivering water to the cyclone hit East Coast.
A Hamilton man has been in Tairāwhiti and Hawkes Bay lending a much-needed hand.
The operator of Waikato Domestic Water Deliveries, Luke Firmin, had been in the region since Monday carting water to communities stricken by Cyclone Gabrielle.
The city of Gisborne has been under “extreme” water use restrictions since February 17, leaving business and communities clearing silt and mud, deposited in cyclone related flooding, struggling for water to clear-up.
Filling up in with water in Ōpōtiki, the 12,000L capacity on his Sinotruck had been put to good use in Wairoa helping clear up at a Farmlands shop.
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The cost of truckloads of water had been absorbed by Firmin himself, although a donor had stepped in to provide a few tanks worth too, he said. In total, Firmin had delivered five loads, or 60,000L to communities around the region.
‘Someone had given me some money to donate water.”
The water Firmin had been carting was mainly chalked up for drinking, but some had been put to use clearing silt from businesses in the north Hawkes Bay town of Wairoa.
MARK TAYLOR / STUFF
In a remarkably unscathed part of Wairoa, Hinemihi marae deals with those who have lost everything with aroha and precision.
The desolation of the town struck Frimin.
“Totally far out! Imagine that happening to you,.”
Firmin said he would drive home to Hamilton on Sunday night, stopping to check on his property in Waihi after Saturday morning’s tornado.
Seeing the silt in Wairoa, he is also considering removing a tank from one of the trucks in his fleet and adding a tipper instead to continue helping once the need for water had dried up.
“There’s so much silt, I’m definitely thinking about it.”
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