Sandbags and solidarity in the watery West

When the flooding hit West Auckland, MTA member Nick Chiew knew what to do. He grabbed a shovel.

“We’re very tight with our community,” Nick, from Autolign Henderson, says. “We wanted to give back when the community needed help.”

And the way to do that was sand – lots and lots of sand.

Nick contacted Len and Morgan Julian from Container Warehouse in Whenuapai, who organised bags, space on their yard and machinery to safely fill hundreds of sandbags for the community.

“They even sorted some safety vests for some of us!” Nick says.

Then Nick, with colleagues Ravi Chandra and Peter Briant, headed off to help out, while others held the fort at work.

“We were okay, and we wanted to make sure everyone else was too. I just told the team, we’re needed out here.”

Sand was donated by several companies, including Inpro Services in Waitakere and Central Landscapes in Swanson.

“We did sandbag deliveries from Taupaki, Henderson Valley, Birkenhead, Wairau and even Onehunga,” Nick says.

Fellow MTA member North Western Toyota kindly lent Nick a brand new Hilux and some of their team to help out.

“We’ve got a real community spirit in West Auckland.”

As for Nick himself, he had a flooded garage and writtenoff heat pump, but the Good Samaritan modestly described it as a “few niggles”.

Clearly, the Wild West hasn’t run out of heroes just yet.

“At any one time, we had five or six guys shovelling sand,” Nick says. “I reckon we bagged up 15 –20 tonnes of sand in a day and a half.”

He reckons they delivered sandbags to at least half a dozen businesses and four homes.

“One was an old lady living by herself – everyone’s been really grateful.”

A worker at Lecsafe NZ the team helped out, then later came back and joined the bagging efforts for a few hours with other locals.

“A lot of people were offering us food and drink, and to have a bit of smoko,” Nick says.