Cyclone Gabrielle: Hastings volunteers help deliver supplies to cut-off communities

East Coast volunteers and authorities are scrambling to get much-needed supplies into the right hands as about 100 communities in the area remain cut off.

It is still not clear how many people are in those isolated areas.

The Hastings' Tomoana Showgrounds has been transformed into a regional distribution hub for volunteers, Civil Defence staff, and military personnel to sort through donated clothing, food, and other supplies.

"A warm jacket or top, two tops, two pairs of pants, and then it's going into pallets over there," volunteer Tanya Reid said, explaining how donated items were bundled.

"One side of the building people are putting it into boxes of types of clothing and then it gets brought here, it gets bundled up, and then it gets sent out."

A mum herself, sorting children's clothing was particularly poignant.

"I guess you think of your own child when you're doing it, and what would they like to wear, and thinking about the families who they're going to," Reid said.

"All of us, over this last week, have just had a sense of oh my God, what can we do to help out?"

A rotation of Defence Force, iwi, and Fire and Emergency helicopters regularly fly in to be loaded with supplies, before being sent back out within about 20 minutes.

Accompanying these are Fire and Emergency airplanes, military ground vehicles, trucks donated by civilians, and other vehicles offered up by Taskforce Kiwi, a retired veterans group.

Hub manager Kirsty Meynell said the centre had been inundated with donations from across New Zealand, and now had a plentiful supply of bedding and clothing.

"People have a great intent, you know, they go 'oh, I need to give them this', but we do ask that it's clothing that is generic, we don't need nightclub gear," Meynell said.

"We do ask that whatever's donated is serviceable - the last thing the people on the ground need is when we're giving them a box and they think they can use it, and then they find it's broken."

The ex-army logistics veteran said the scale of distribution was unlike anything she had ever experienced.

"What I love about this is the volunteer force, and what they bring to it. In a military environment, you don't really have volunteers, it's military," Meynell said.

"Some of these people their whānau are affected, they might have people missing ... but they still, when they can and if they've got the time, they're here every day to help get stuff out the door."

The supplies are being sent to those affected by the storm, particularly people in cut-off areas.

Hawke's Bay Civil Defence Emergency Group Controller Ian Macdonald said there were about 100 isolated communities from Wairoa to central Hawke's Bay, and it would be weeks before some were accessible by road.

While the communities were thought to range from between 10 to hundreds of people, it was still unclear just how many individuals were cut off.

Iwi controller for the region, Henry Heke, said Māori networks were helping to reach some isolated areas.

"We found out yesterday there were three Māori communities that I had no idea we hadn't made contact with, and we realised that we need to get some services into there," Heke said.

"Today, I've been sourcing Starlinks and they'll be arriving, I'll get choppers up into those areas with generators and power, and we'll take some food and some water up there too."

Food, water, clothing, bedding, toiletries, generators, and fuel are all much needed, but one thing that will not be as easy to source is housing.

Heke said Ngāti Whātua in Auckland had offered 200 cabins, but that alone would not be enough.

"We've got over 1000 people that are homeless, before the cyclone," he said.

"Now we don't know the full brunt of this, but we could be up to 1500 families displaced, on top of what we already had."

With winter on its way, the matter is becoming more urgent with each passing day.