(PR.co.nz) The 50 Degrees South Trust, usually tasked with helping to preserve NZ’s subantarctic islands, found 1000 km south of Christchurch, is bringing sustenance to the earthquake-ravaged eastern area of Christchurch.
A team of researchers had returned home to Christchurch from a 9-week trust-run expedition to Campbell Island (www.campbellisland.org.nz) only a week before the earthquake. With them came boxes of leftover food from the expedition. With no power on the island the food was required to last without refrigeration, so the leftovers include 100s of tetrapacks of longlife milk, cans of spaghetti, baked beans, soup, two minute noodles and toilet paper. This food is the ideal type of supplies needed for the hard-hit residential areas of eastern Christchurch, where power and a return to normal life will likely take weeks if not months.
Shelley McMurtrie, chairperson of the trust, and its other trust members felt that the food was better used by this community in desperate need for supplies, rather than being stored for use in future expeditions to the remote islands of the subantarctic. The food was stored in the business premises of the trust chairperson (EOS Ecology, www.eosecology.co.nz), which required a cleanup before the food could be accessed and removed. They are hoping to give the food to the CCWC Food Centre in Aranui later this week.
Media Release 8 March 2011.