Donate to help flood victims get electricity back

Hey, my name is Chris pemberton, and I am the Director of Local and Licensed Electrical and Airconditioning. After the 2nd round of floods and watching FB filled with Northern Rivers residents' ongoing horror stories, I felt compelled to help, and so I visited Lismore to see what supplies they needed.

As soon as I started speaking to the core recovery crew on the ground about what supplies I could help with, it became very apparent that the main thing that was going to help people was more trades on the ground, and there was a massive need for Electricians to help people get Secure and Warm for Winter.

My first thought was to come back with one of my team members to help them nudge forward with this, but as they showed me a database of over 200 open requests of people in dire need of assistance (and they said that may just the tip of the iceberg) my brain went into overdrive. I wanted to try and solve all the electrical headaches for these people and It seemed like just me and one of my guys getting stuck in, would not make anywhere near the progress the town desperately needed.

The crew at Helping hands Lismore have a motto that's currently helping to make all their decisions. They came up with it because of the sheer scope of people in need of assistance. It's their way of figuring out who to allocate their limited time towards. The motto is - Safe, Secure, and Warm, meaning that if someone is asking for help, the priority is to make sure that everyone is safe, secure, and warm as a baseline. With the cold of winter creeping into everyone's damaged and damp homes, with some not able to live in their homes at all, this sounds like a good baseline, right??

This crew are just some of the local Hereos in a community that is trying to be brave and put one 'collective' foot in front of the other, and if we can assist them in this mission and help everyone get power and lights to where they need them to be safe, secure and warm. And in time for winter then, I think this will be a solid chunk of help to get the flood-affected region one step towards life back to normal after 2 years of covid topped off with two hectic floods!

I mentioned in my video that my company would match dollar for dollar in this recovery effort, but I just want to be upfront that at this stage, we can only commit to matching up to $20K. Business is a tough game, and we have had our fair share of ups and downs through covid, so I need to be careful that I am looking after my crew aswell, so we can continue to help.

Your generous donations will directly assist us in providing man-hours, materials, and accommodation to get a decent size crew up to make a solid difference to the people that need it the most.

Examples of this would be that essentially -

For every man-hour funded by your donations, we will donate a second man-hour.

For every ruined powerpoint or fixture you help us replace, we will replace another.

Every switchboard that went underwater and we replace, your donations will help fund the same again.

For every new circuit, your donations help fund to help get someone out of trouble - we will run another.

And so on.

After this initial push and depending on how many donations are received, we will aim to create a prolonged and sustainable effort with the idea of giving a team of electricians the means to free barracks to stay while continuing to provide the community free electrical services where they are most needed. This won't just be limited to Lismore as with enough resources, we can help other badly affected areas such as Coraki and Bungawalbin etc.

We will also see if we can engage other electrical contractors we know to come in from out of town to lend a hand since the lack of electricians in town seems to be a critical problem given the magnitude of repairs needed. With donations, we can pay these contractors and make it viable for them to temporarily pause or reduce operations in their city to come up and work alongside our team and help get more people fixed up. The more hands-on deck, the better!

Also, if you would like to donate appliances or supplies instead of money, we can help bring the supplies up as we bring up manpower. Please reach out to us through the gofundme link and I can share with you a list of what is most needed at that given week as im following a lot of the local help groups now which have the good relevant info on these things.

Thank you to everyone who donates, ill keep you updated on our progress here!