Perth men on mercy mission
Two Perth men used Facebook to generate support for the victims of the fires which destroyed the town of Yarloop claiming two lives, driving 700kms in one day to deliver the donated goods.
Daniel Gerson and Shmoo Burnie
34-yr-old Shmoo Burnie and 32-yr-old Daniel Gerson took to social media to seek support for the victims of the fires which have destroyed over 130 homes in the State’s south-west.
Burnie told J-Wire: “This story is not about us…it’s about the wonderful response we got from the Facebook post….from our friends and those they shared the call for help with.”
The men received so much support from their FB community friends they had to use two large utes and a cage trailer to get the relief to a collection point near the fire zone with the passenger seats in their vehicles were jammed pack with goods.
Loaded ute
Passenger seat
Burnie told J-Wire: “People donated goods and vehicles. There was a collection point for goods at Storage King in Picton just outside of Bunbury. To get to the collection point we had to take a three and a half hour diversion to avoid the fire area to reach the collection point. Storage King opened especially for us on a Sunday and organised delivery of the goods to those affected yesterday evening.”
Picton lies 55kms from fire devastated Yarloop.
The one-day round trip took mortgage broker Burnie and financial planner Gerson almost 13 hours because of the imposed detour around the fire area. Burnie said that “we were just a couple of people wondering what we could do to help and figured we could ask people for things which could help those in trouble, grab a couple of utes…and drive the donations down.”
The men delivered food, toiletries, clothes, bed linen, blankets, towels, sleeping bags, toys, pet supplies including combs for family animals which may have been affected by the fires.Everything was donated.
Burnie said: “We saw smoke from fires on the drive down but they would not have been from the devastated area. There are fires burning in other regions. The whole point of the long detour was to avoid the fires.
Burnie added: “We asked people for help. They helped. We packed. We went. We unpacked. We came home. We were just drivers. It was a big group effort.”
