Frontline Heroes: Pretty tyre-d — but on the road daily with vital deliveries

“If you heard of it happening in a third world country you’d be shocked," said Merv Colton, who founded the motorbike logistics group called Bravo Charlie Tango in response to the need he saw across Ireland.

He started the initiative two weeks before lockdown while working on the Open Source Ventilator project — which aims to design and build medical equipment — when he noticed that getting existing PPE where it was most needed was a pressing problem: “Frantic social media appeals were popping up. In St James’ Hospital, medics turned the cameras on themselves to explain how critical the situation with PPE was."

“I’m a motorcyclist, I’m in an annual event called the Irish Photo Rally where hundreds of motorcyclists travel across the country.

"The delivery group started with Photo Rally members but then we started our own group called Bravo Charlie Tango. We have 12,000-13,000 people in our private Facebook group now with about 800 or 900 actively signed up to deliver transport."

And Bravo Charlie Tango has even crossed borders — virtually — with Mr Colton’s sister helping to co-ordinate deliveries across Irish roads and boreens from lockdown in northern Italy.

“Everyone in the group had a sister or cousin who was a medic or carer and we started hearing through the grapevine where the shortages were.

"We were getting offers of PPE donations so we just matched the donations with those who needed it.

"A huge amount of Irish companies with PPE closed — like beauticians, barbers, animal groomers, childcare providers — they all had PPE like gloves which we rounded up. If someone has a glitch in their supply chain and needs an emergency supply of a week's worth of PPE, we’re there to do it," Mr Colton said.

“And we get funny donations too — we delivered a pallet of Sudocream to Crumlin Children’s Hospital on Friday after it was donated from another hospital which had an excess supply. Last week we had a pallet of Lily O’Brien’s chocolates delivered and Powerscourt Estate donated a field of tulips which we picked and delivered to nursing homes."

On one day alone, they made 167 deliveries of PPE donated by controversial Mixed Martial Arts star, Conor McGregor.

People's goodness has been "phenomenal" Mr Colton said, with people donating time, money and supplies to the group every day: “We’re from every walk of life — farming, legal, gardaí — so if there was an appeal for soap, someone had a shop or knew someone with a shop who could donate or sell it.

"You can find almost anything within the network. And wherever we see a need we try to solve it."

Just four people have been coordinating the dispatches — which run from 6am-8pm seven days a week — although Mr Colton has just taken on two new recruits.

All dispatchers are bikers (although they sometimes drive a larger vehicle for big deliveries), they’re all volunteers, and they all pay for their own petrol.

Coleman Ryan, who co-owns Frankfield Driving Range in Cork, is one of those volunteer drivers: “In the 'early days', people had nothing. They were so thrilled to get deliveries.

When a job is put up on our group within 20 seconds there are 30 offers to.. say ...collect masks from Listowel."

The roads have been almost empty since lockdown making public compliance with Government health guidelines visible, he said.

But a "heart-wrenching" funeral in Abbeyleix, where the hearse was followed by two lone cars — with one person in each — as neighbours lined the streets in mourning really pulled the current crisis into focus.

"Mr Ryan said: "It's so sad to see someone reach the end of their life and that's all the send-off they can get. It really brought the reality of this crisis home."