Five Rivers Café AED Now Outside Round Clock

The defibrillator at Five Rivers Café had been sitting dormant — battery flat, pads expired, locked inside a building that closes at night. It's back now, and anyone can reach it.

New café owner Emily Todd discovered earlier this year that an AED had previously been donated to the site. She tracked it down, found it wasn't fit for use, and rang PowerNet to ask for help. That call set off something bigger than a single fix.

PowerNet funded a new external cabinet, replacement pads and a new battery, then arranged CPR and AED training with Hato Hone St John for café staff and locals. The training ran on August 13. The unit is now mounted outside in a keypad-lock cabinet — accessible around the clock. Anyone who calls 111 will be given the code by the emergency call-taker.

Five Rivers sits on the road between Fiordland, Queenstown and Invercargill. It's not a quiet corner. Todd knew that.

"Five Rivers is a busy stopping point for locals and people travelling through on their way to or from Fiordland, Queenstown, and Southland, so having the AED outside where it can be accessed at any time just makes sense," Todd said. "It's also been great having St John come along to train my team and some of our regulars so we can feel more comfortable about what we should do in an emergency."

For PowerNet, the call from Todd prompted a harder question: how many of their other donated AEDs across the network are in the same state?

"Emily had already done the hard work of tracking the AED down and identifying what was needed to make it truly useful for her community again," PowerNet communications manager Hannah McLeod said. "For us, the obvious next step was to help make that happen, and it made us wonder how the other AEDs we've donated over the years are faring, and whether they're still accessible to the communities they're in."

Over the next 12 months, PowerNet and Hato Hone St John will audit the AEDs previously donated throughout PowerNet's network — checking condition and accessibility.

Hato Hone St John Southland community engagement coordinator Tracy Kilkelly said speed was everything once a cardiac arrest started.

"Having an AED is important, but it's just as important that people can access it quickly and feel confident using it," Kilkelly said. "In a cardiac arrest, every minute matters. Making this AED available to the wider community, alongside providing Three Steps for Life training, helps make sure people are better prepared to act if they're ever faced with an emergency."

The original unit was donated to Five Rivers Café by PowerNet in 2018 as part of its partnership with St John. It took a new owner asking a simple question to bring it back to life.