Help For Opotiki From Many Towns

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30391, 16 March 1964, Page 12

Help For Opotiki From Many Towns

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, March 15.

Offers of help are pouring into Opotiki. Cities and towns as far afield as Gisborne and Auckland are giving money, clothes, bedding and food.

Farming communities in the surrounding districts have offered accommodation for children.

Farmers have given food and with their families have laboured beside the townspeople to clean up the mess.

Many workers have given all their time in helping persons unable to do the work themselves while their own homes were still full of silt and mud. Offers such as that of the Gisborne Jaycees to drive a convoy of cars 260 miles around the cape to evacuate 300 children and care for them should a health risk arise are typical of the resources which emergency workers can call upon. The emergency force of Ministry of Works men who are assisting with the restoration of essential services ctarted within the borough at

first light on Friday in charge of Mr P. F. Reynolds, resident engineer at Rotorua. They have concentrated on r-moving and burying dead stock and perishables in a huge pit, cleaning refuse from the streets and restoring the water supply.

Many children have been sent ' ■ stay outside the town to give their parents a chance to clean up at home and in th? shops. Police officers were stationed during the week on the outski’ts of Opotiki to turn away sightseres who earlier were hindering the cleanup and repair work.

Tonight some shops were ready to open, displaying depleted stocks or whatever supplies they had been able to obtain. Chemists’ shops were able to fill some prescriptions, grocery shops,

drapers and garages were ready to begin business again. The picture theatre showed films on Saturday night and tonight. Stock was killed at the abattoir today and the meat is expected to be available in the butchers’ shops tomorrow. Distribution

The organisation set up by the Red Cross and Salvation Army and Presbyterian Church was sorting and distributing the gifts tonight.

Several cash donations and offers of more if required have been made to the Red Cross and the Mayor’s Relief Fund clothes and goods have been sent from Gisborne, Matata, Te Puke, Edgecumbe, Tauranga, Kawerau, and Napier. Included in the load of clothes from Gisborne was a tremendous amount of frozen goods and meat from the firm of Watties in Gisborne, said Mrs Gault.

Dumped Goods

The dumping of only a fraction of the goods damaged by the floods last week at Opotiki has already reclaimed nearly an acre of land at the borough tip. Few shops are expected to be back in business before Tuesday or Wednesday. However, in a little more than three months Opotiki should be safe from a flood even bigger than last Wednesday’s torrent. Stopbanks begun just after Christmas already stretch for most of the length of the Otara river boundary of the town at the height of the flood they still topped the waters by more than two feet and they are due to be finished in three weeks.