AN ENNIS MAN was among a convoy of Tesla car owners that transported up to 70 Ukrainians from Poland to Ireland in a 1900km journey across mainland Europe.
Founder of the Tesla Owners Group, John Casey was among the key personnel in a major humanitarian mission which helped 70 Ukrainians leave their war-torn country and arrive in the safety of Ireland, 37 of which were children. All drivers paid their way with a GoFundMe page bringing in donations to the tune of €25,000.
Planning began on March 12th and on Thursday last, the convoy of 17 vehicles boarded Jonathan Swift ferry and made their way for Bruges, they arrived in Poznan on Friday night, the following morning they filled their cars with refugees and their belongings.
“It is hard to describe what was faced, it was something else, we actually discovered later that some of the people they were fleeing, they said they would come to Ireland but they didn’t know who were even though we had all paperwork and Ukrainian Ambassador approval, they said they would take a chance and go,” John told The Clare Echo. One woman even took a photo of the car she was set to sit into and sent it to her husband so that he would have a registration number to trace if she was trafficked to another country.
Women and children aged from three months to 97 years old joined the convoy, paediatricians and engineers were among them, all united in their desire to find safety. They stayed in Liege on Saturday night, come Sunday morning it was time to board the ferry. John is grateful to Irish Ferries who held back its departure by 45 minutes to ensure they got on board.
While the Ukrainians didn’t know where they were going, they were trusting of the group who had a “letter of bona fida from the Ukrainian Ambassador”. “They are traumatised. They fled a war, there was tears getting into the car, some of them were holding onto stuff and they weren’t going to let go,” John recalled. “Poland is overwhelmed with them, they have done incredible in terms of dealing with the influx of people, some people want to stay there because they think it will be easy to get back when it’s over, others of the view that there’s so many in Poland they can’t be accommodated”. He added, “People wanted to come because they have nothing over there. The distance involved was no bother to them, I had four people in my car, two of them had come from Odessa on a bus for two solid days to get to Poznan, they had travelled as far from Ukraine to get to where we were picking up. They were fleeing from everything, they took a chance on us and I said Ireland will welcome you”.
Each electric vehicle (EV) has its own battery capacity, John’s Tesla had to stop approximately 20 times over the course of the journey to charge in England, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland, quite simply it was the biggest journey he ever undertook in the car but also his entire life, “it certainly was, I’ve nothing like that done before”.
As they travelled together, they built up a bond, the Ukrainians played Folk music on Spotify to give a taste of what they like while John put on the Kilfenora Céilí Band and Riverdance to showcase Irish culture, contrasting histories were also discussed. “You have an affinity with them being two solid days in the car, I chatted in pigeon English, I told them about Ireland, some of them are not going back, they are not going back, they have been bombed out of it, they will get their way in life and we’re hoping we’ve given them a start”.
Casey believes that future trips may be carried out by the Group over the coming weeks. “I’ve no doubt we will have another willing ten people to come across like we did when we draw a breath, this will be the first of a few I’d suspect, we have the contacts made”.
Of the Ukrainians that travelled on the Tesla convoy, some are based in Newbridge with others in Donegal while The Clare Echo has learned that a cohort are now in Loop Head.
