Earlier this week, Mosgiel and Taieri residents were busy sandbagging after 74.6mm of rain fell on Sunday, followed by another 43.7mm on Monday morning.
The rain caused surface flooding and led to a late-night sandbagging and drain-clearing effort by residents and emergency services.
Some residents also took shelter in the Taieri Bowling Club overnight.
Pizza Hut Mosgiel owner Gagandeep Singh said after seeing first-hand how sodden volunteers, emergency services and ordinary Mosgiel citizens ended up while trying to help, he decided he needed to head to work at 2am to cook some fresh pizzas to warm everyone up.
When the restaurant doors closed at 11pm on Sunday, Mr Singh said Mosgiel was still well and truly awake.
When he was heading back to the store later that night in his pyjamas to check the shop, he noticed emergency responders, volunteers and ordinary citizens working hard.
‘‘Everybody was rushing, filling up sandbags ... so we pulled clothes over our pyjamas and started helping.’’
‘‘It was cold, it was windy and it was rainy ... none of the shops are open at this time of the night, so we turned on the oven to pass out some hot, fresh pizzas.’’
He said seeing the look on firefighters’ faces when they were handed the pizzas made it worth it.
Mr Singh said they also made pizzas for people sheltering at the Taieri Bowling Club.
Then on Monday morning, he offered a free pizza to anyone affected by the floods, or who just could not manage to cook.
He estimated he gave out more than 200 pizzas.
‘‘This is our community, so it’s the least we could do.
‘‘When we saw the firefighters smile ... that made our night.’’
