The second week after the February earthquake Sarah-Alice and I signed up for The Flying Squad, another name for the Rapid Response Team. The task of the Flying Squad was to follow up on calls from one of many hundreds of Suburban Welfare Teams that were visiting households identifying those who urgently needed “emotional support”. On any given day some 435 Welfare Teams went out “door knocking” in the Eastern Suburbs to assess how people were coping. Every day the teams visited some 11,000 homes, and with visits limited to 15-20 minutes, this initial check was basic in character. The Flying Squad’s task was to back these services up. There were about ten teams operating in the Flying Squad, each consisted of two counsellors/therapists and a police officer. Each day the teams were allotted a special area, and during that week we were stationed in Avonside, Shirley, Wainoni, Redcliff, Sumner, Mt Pleasant, Huntsbury and the areas north-east of the ‘cordon’. When we received a call from the Westpac Centre (from where the Project Suburban Welfare was managed), our police officer (in our case a woman) would drive us to the designated address and would do a check of the situation at hand, introducing ourselves and the purpose of our visit. We would do around eight visits a day. Needless to say we met with many people in dire circumstances. The earthquake had taken its toll.
I remember we were once sent to talk with an couple about my age, who refused to leave their home up in the Port Hills. Their home had only moments before been ‘red stickered’ by the people of the Civil Defence indicating that the house was absolutely unsafe to enter. However, when the people of the Civil Defense had gone, the man had climbed the roof with a couple of tarpaulins to make it “weatherproof, with the help of a neighbour”. He and his wife then moved back into the house, and when the Welfare Team visited that couple earlier on that same day they were astonished to find the couple still “living” in a house that could easily collapse with any ongoing aftershock. The couple remained very persistent and so we were called in to talk with them. When we stopped at their address we could see from the roadside that the house was in a shambles and uninhabitable, another shake of magnitude 4 could easily bring it down. The bricks were precariously loose just waiting to tumble down the bank. We asked them to sit down with us for a “chat” providing them with an opportunity to tell their story. It was a story we had already heard many times before: this house is our “home”, we have lived here for many years, we are now retired and we expect to grow old here, it is all we have…, and…we really don’t want to leave this beautiful spot, it is so dear to us. We don’t have any family here, yes we have friends but we’re not the sort of people who ask for help”. Pointing at the tarpaulins the man said that the house was now weatherproof and that they had set up their beds in the living room in the back of the house, “there is no need for us to leave”. He was adamant and angry. When we explained that their place was absolutely unsafe to even enter let alone live in it, they said they had nowhere to go. It eventually transpired that they had friends in the area, but they didn’t want to bother their friends because they had enough of their own troubles. When we asked their daughter, she said that this wasn’t true. Friends had already offered for them to come and stay. As we continued our conversation it turned out that the couple found it unbearable to accept help. “We are used looking after ourselves and we don’t want to be a burden to others”. To admit that you need help, to allow yourself to ask for help, to open yourself up for help, can be very difficult for people. During that week we encountered this problem on a number of occasions. In this particular case we suggested that if they didn’t want to burden their friends, we would need to call on the people of the Red Cross to arrange for some alternative accommodation that very day. By this time the woman started to open up for the possibility that perhaps they would need to look for somewhere else to go, “temporarily of course”. We left them with some telephone numbers and urged their daughter to call the friends she mentioned. In the car we reported back to the Westpac Centre that in their situation alternative accommodation was urgent.
We found the morning sessions very stimulating but exhausting. At 7.00 am, teams of building inspectors, people from Civil Defence and EQC, police, the Sallies, the Red Cross teams, and the welfare volunteers would gather in the main arena of the Westpac Centre. Thousands of people were there, including Anne Mackay. People came from all over the country, and from Australia. Our policewoman was from Taupo. After a briefing the various teams would team up on their tasks. We would pick up our lunch pack (thank you if you happened to be instrumental in preparing our food) have break-fast and wait for our first call out. At the end of a long day the teams of the Flying Squad would return to the Westpac Centre to debrief. After that dinner was provided.
Herman & Sarah-Alice