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National

Cyclone Gabrielle's unforgiving aftermath unites Flaxmere community

Hawke's Bay, particularly Napier, are now among the hardest hit after Cyclone Gabrielle wreaked havoc across the North Island this week, leaving much of the surrounding area without power and many roads and bridges covered with slips or washed away.

The Defence Force has dispatched staff to Hawke's Bay, to assist with evacuation and rescue efforts.

Community leader Henare O’Keefe (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Porou) is at Te Aranga Marae in Flaxmere, Hastings, and says the last couple of days have been a "flood of emotions" due to the devastation people there have seen and experienced.

“People are homeless, they’ve lost jobs, they’ve lost their homes and every worldly possession and some of them have lost their dignity.”

O’Keefe says some people have no power or water but the Flaxmere community has stood up and reacted to the call for help before the government’s other relief organisations started to help.

“The community beat them to the punch with pillows and food and hugs and kisses and words of encouragement, blankets.”

O’Keefe says they have turned the Flaxmere Boxing Academy into sleeping quarters for people left homeless and the effort from the wider community has been unbelievable.

“We were underprepared on many levels. We just didn’t expect the severity of what we experienced.”

O’Keefe says the emergency services are doing the best they can but people shouldn’t just rely on them.

“I know they have responsibilities, they have a mandate and are resourced to fill that mandate. But if you’re going to sit back on your hand and say 'they have got this', well you’ll be sadly mistaken.”

O’Keefe says he has seen personally at least 380 people needing emergency accommodation and supplies after being relocated.

Kaumatua and kuia are devastated at the damage that has hit the area, with Omahu Marae being completely submerged along with the urupa, the church and their papakainga.

“Their whakapapa, the very essence of what they are about is gone, stripped away from them through no fault of their own, and they are coping as any normal person would cope, but that whakapapa has drawn them together.”