A helping hand - or several - joins community effort for bushfire relief

Taskforce Kiwi volunteer Kerry Ford assesses the damage to 134-year-old former St Andrews Church following a bushfire in Loburn, North Canterbury.

Two months after a bushfire burned through sections of the North Canterbury town of Loburn, the community is set to receive support from national disaster relief group Taskforce Kiwi.

On Friday, 19 January 2024 the town of Loburn, just north of Rangiora, battled a small but significant 12 hectare bushfire that destroyed three homes and damaged over a dozen other properties.  

Following a weekend long operation in similarly fire affected Port Hills, Christchurch (Seven Sharp story link), Taskforce Kiwi engaged with Loburn community leaders and established there was also a need there for the skills of the organisations’ ex-defence/emergency services volunteer base to support recovery. 

“The Loburn fire in January had a devastating impact on a tight knit community” says Adams of the work required in Loburn. “Two months later there’s still a lot of work to be done to get them on the road to long term recovery, and Taskforce Kiwi volunteers will be rolling their sleeves up and doing all that we can to help”.

The veteran-led organisation recently celebrated the milestone of reaching over 500 skilled volunteers countrywide, just a year and a half since receiving charitable status. 

Of this impressive number of volunteers, over 250 have represented Taskforce Kiwi on 10 operational deployments in five countries, completing over 10,000 hours of skilled volunteer labour over the past 15 months.