Papatoetoe resident Sunita Whavel was panicking when she saw the damage her property sustained during last week's tornado in her Auckland suburb.
"I was really, really stressed ... because I had no idea where to go from here," she told 1 NEWS.
She had just finished renovations on her property which cost tens of thousands of dollars but was yet to sort out insurance.
The tornado ripped up large portions of her roof, shattered her fencing, and tore through the pergola.
She and her young son were facing an uncertain future.
"I am literally freaking out," she told 1 NEWS on Sunday.
Construction company Naylor Love saw her story and reached out to Whavel.
It had builders already working at Manurewa High School and diverted some of them to the Papatoetoe house.
The team is now fixing Whavel's home - for free.
"At the moment we've rebuilt the fence ... just to give that security aspect on the property," Gary Lucey of Naylor Love told 1NEWS.
Next the team will begin repairing the roof.
"We're going to build a scaffold tomorrow to make it all safe so the roofers can get up there and actually assess the damage because there's quite a lot of damage up there," said Lucey.
"It's something out of a war-zone - just turning down the street and seeing all the trees in half, all the skips in the street, people working out of their own cars, living out of their own cars, this is very, very sad but it's great to see the community getting together just to put it all back together."
"It's a big relief," said Whavel.
"Today I'm really feeling so good and much lighter because this is happening."
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