Kiyota.
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. A major blaze at an Auckland supermarket this week has once again highlighted the incredible work of our firefighters.
More than twenty.
Appliances and over eighty firefighters spend hours containing the fire at the Victoria Park New World in scenes that captivated audiences across the country. It's not the first major fire the city has seen this year either, and it's unlikely to be the last. So what's it like on the frontline of these fires? And is our current fleet of
firefighting appliances up for the job? Today on the Front Page, we're joined by New Zealand Professional Firefighters Union Auckland President Terry Bird and Auckland local Representative Josh Nichols to get.
Into what it's really like for our firefighters.
So, Terry, can you give us an insight into what goes into containing a fire like what we saw at Victoria Park this week.
We have a set of predetermined responses, so automatically we respond to appliances to an incident. The officers in charge responding to the QUR can add additional resources and appliances if they think that there is a need, and that typically happens, and when they get to the fire, they size up the situation and consider adding more resources and then attack the fire using the tools that they have.
Josh, I guess as civilians we kind of see the fire from the outside, see the plumes of smoke for Instagram, etc. But I imagine on the ground it must be quite taxing work.
Yeah, you know, I think that's a really brittent point that you bring up, and I think that's something that both me and Terry would like to share that we should have gone jil members. You know, right through there's there's a there's a big group of people here that are involved in the response to one of these fires, you know, and it starts with our fire com staff in the first instance. You know, they're the people that mobilize and dispatch their appliances or the crews to go
up and respond to the call. And then you know the members that are out there on the internet ground. You know, these are extremely challenging and arduous conditions and you know, these these men and one and they give it everything. You know, they come to work. I guess with, you know, with a pride, a drive and a high level of professionalism to sort of save savable life and save buildings. You know, for people of the New Zealand communities and all are very prudent. Point is the fact
that it's it's not effort that's letting us down. It's it's the equipment, strategies and support.
I saw a hell a lot of smoke coming out of the roof of the building at a New World Victoria Park. We walked in there to do some work on a supplier and wellin fifteen minutes have been inside. I experienced the fire agil maybe in thisitry for so long I just thought it was a drill, but it was an actual, real fire alarm and within minutes there was smoke valuing out.
Every week, seeing how many appliances and firefighters responded to that fire in Auckland this week. If you were to live out in Botany or Pocacoa or somewhere, were you ever at risk of not having someone show up at your door?
What are the staff challenges here?
It's a real challenge for an emergency organization to have enough resources to deal with an immediate emergency and then to have enough resources to deal with a second or potentially third or more. And so there's always been a way of balancing that, and we have what we call service delivery guidelines, and that we try to make sure finds tries to make sure that there is enough resources
to always be able to meet those guidelines. And those guidelines are about how long it takes appliances and crews to arrive at any structured fire and probably should include any emergency. And that's how they determine. What's happened over time is that the resources have become more stretched. It's taking us longer to get to calls because of traffic congestion and traffic calming devices. We are not meeting those times.
So it is becoming normal for a fire appliance to take longer to get to an emergency.
And I can imagine, Josh, that every minute and every moment counts. So how frustrating is it that there are those delays.
It's really frustrating. And I think, you know, we need to understand that a fire doubles and size every thirty seconds.
You know, someone you have put that into perspective. You know, times is of the essence, right, you know, when we're having appalled specialist appliances from our fourth largest city into our largest city, you know at a two to three hour response time, you can kind of see where we start to face some of their complexities and then the challenges that are then on laid to oc cruise on the insidaground officers that are in charge and have to
make those technical command decisions, you know, with limited tools on the toolbox, so to speak.
Yeah, it just seems like a burden that they really don't or shouldn't have to deal with in terms of the appliances that we're talking about. I mean, am I right to say Terry that Auckland has quite an aging fleet.
Yeah, it's a nationwide problem that there hasn't been an injection of new appliances into the large centers for some time, and FENS does face some challenges around that, and it is doing a procurement at the moment to replace some of the aging aerials, as it is with some of our standard fire appliances. I think if we are just to highlight, if you go back to the large fire we had at the International Convention Center in twenty nineteen, one of the recommendations out of that review was that
FAMES should develop a strategy on aerial appliances. It should investigate what kinds we need, how many, and where they should be. And so six years later there is a draft of that document. I've not seen the draft, but I'm going to speculate that it suggests or recommends that we should increase our stock of verial appliances and we should refresh them more often so that they don't get to an old, unreliable age. I would then go, well, why hasn't FENS done that if that's what their review
says that they should do. And now I'm speculating here because I don't actually know what the review says. And I'll speculate again. Our organization finds has been told to save sixty million dollars. It hasn't been told to do that because there has been some robust review of how we performed. I don't believe anyone has looked at us and said, you know, we can still be an effect
of service if we take this much money off. It's been arbitrarily opposed on us by the government and now by an emergency I'm speculating again knows that it needs to invest in resources, that knows that it needs to invest in its personnel, but it can't because it has sixty million dollar savings imposed on it and any spinning that it did would get the wrath of the minister.
Yeah, and Josh, Yet we've seen this year two firefighters having to be rescued from an aerial appliance while fighting a fire because the aerial appliance malfunctioned. You mentioned getting the gear and getting the appliance from Hamilton. Is it ridiculous in twenty twenty five that we don't have enough aerial appliances in our largest city.
Yeah. I mean, look, I think we're going to understand some of the complexities here. So you know, like Kerry's highlight of the ICC fire that we had in twenty nineteen now and twenty nineteen when that incident came through Auckland at that stage was only running one heavy aerial appliance. Fast forward six years forward and we're doing the same custom and practice with Hamilton's aerial having had a cos the day before. It was in for general maintenance and
routine service. But because we have no fat in the system, that truck has to come out of commission. There's no relief appliants there to be able to sustain capability. So then we're in a mad rush to put it back together to then get it on the road to travel some two hours up to our largest city to serve and support us. And a lot of that comes back to we just don't have fat in the system. You know, we co share a heavy aerial relief of plants which
is twenty seven years old. It's currently out of commission at the moment of waiting what its future looks like with some significant structural rush, you know, and it's seventeen years overdue a major rebuilder and infection. So you know, these are some of the complexities that we're facing in the frustration. That's you know, the reason why we're here talking to you today.
And getting it from Hamilton.
I mean that is reliant on it not getting turned around because it had a road closure as well.
Well.
I mean it's not I mean it's road closures, but it's also too you know, we're robbing Pete to feed Paul, so to speak. You know, that then adds undue stress and pressure to the cruise down in Hamilton around their tactics and strategy because we've pulled their resource up to help us, you know, in twenty twenty five. In frontline operations. One we shouldn't be in a position where we're having
to put trucks back together to respond them. But two, we should have enough surge capacity or capability in the system to be able to support cities major operational incidents and also be able to have fatness system to support general service servicing, routine checks, maintenance and the likes. You know, we shouldn't be lift in these positions where we're having to roll the boss, so to speak.
I heard on the radio the other day the mayor of Hamilton claiming to be their fastest growing city in the country, and they also have a twenty seven year old aerial appliance, and they have an enormous amount of risks in the city that require fire response. And here we are using it in upland because we are not adequately resourced to look after ourselves. Let's suggest to me that the MS is broken.
Joe Stanley, the NZPF YOUW Boss, was actually on the front page back in twenty twenty two talking about the lack of appliances.
As an operation for far. As someone who works on a fight truck every day. I am disappointed that the money that it's given to the organization doesn't speed on responding to those communities' needs. The lack of heavy aerials, the parable state of their aging and decrepit pumping fleet as just an example of how the money is there, but it's not being spent in the right place.
Are you surprised we're still having these conversations three years later?
I have to say I'm not surprised. What does surprise me. FENS is doing some work towards this, and I acknowledge that there are some good people and femes doing some good work towards improving our fleet. What we're challenged with is a lack of resourcing in those departments and a lack of funding, a lack of appetit to spend money on additional resources. And who do we have to convince that spending additional money to make sure that our fire service is modern and prepared for the risks that we
may need to attend. Who do we need to lobby to do that? We need to lobby the purse strings holder.
Are you guys nervous about the state of things at the moment? I don't want to be all doom and gloom, But what do you reckon needs to happen for change to come about.
Well, I think it definitely knocks the confidence out of our members. You know, you highlight the incident over on the shore on the twenty fourth of April, you know, it does taken off to the confidence and I think, you know, we need to acknowledge that our fire fighters, you know, they go to some of the most testing and trying conditions you know that you never meet in
your life, and we want them to be confident. We want them to entrust their in their equipment to be able to do their job to the best of their ability. As for change, well, I think the first step is actually delivering on these operational reviews which have given us clear LFIS opportunities for improvement. You know, there's one thing to be able to talk about it, but then there's another thing to be able to have tangible deliverables on it.
And also, you know, like Terry's talked about with this supposed review that was meant to be designed and released that we're nobody's seen and still waiting for, is that you know, there is a real significant need for an enhancement and capability. You know, our city at our city is sitting at one point six million people. You know, it's dramatically increased for us over the years, and we haven't seen an increase in staffing or performance and capability.
I mean ironically, and Terry could quote to this, as you know, in the nineteen eighties we had six heavy eeril appliances in the city. We're now down to one in twenty twenty five.
Yeah, I'd like to answer that question as well. Choose seat. So I've been a career firefighter. I think it's thirty eight years. I've been through a range of reviews and changes in this organization, and I personally believe that we are possibly in the west condition that we've been in my career. And I try to balance that. Is it because I know a whole lot more because I'm involved in the whole lot of stuff and that's quite notice, you know, during other changes, or is it genuinely are
we really in a crisis environment? And it sort of doesn't matter where we are not in a we are not in good shape this organization.
About two years ago, losses involved with this particular incident, a house fire that was starting to brew up, and so it was still savable. But as soon as hearing to go through the door, the pumpound a catastrophic water failure, just started dumping water on the brown It was a part failure. It was determined from that, and we're up with the investigation that it had failed because it had
never been maintained. So it was the bureaucracy had missed the opportunity to make sure that the vehicles were up to speck and safe for.
Us to use.
Yeah, we keep here about getting more cops on the beat, the shortage of medical staff. I mean those hit the headlines all the time, and you guys are the third part of our emergency services.
Isn't good enough? Or do you feel left behind?
I think a really good answer to that is who is monitoring the performance of fire an emergency? And I would suggest that no one is monitoring their operational performance, their preparedness. Again, there are a lot of good people doing a lot of good work. But if we respond to an incident and our performance is not as good as it could be, we don't share that dirty laundry. And really, the only organization with a really good insight to how far an emergency is performing in the main centers,
is the NZPF. You people don't necessarily think that we're a credible organization to be judging fire an emergency because we have conflictal interest, but it's still we are the only organization who is waving the flag and saying we have some serious problems here.
Josh, if you got a minister in front of you, what would you say to them? What needs to happen like yesterday?
Well, I think it comes down to this, really, you know, the New Zealand and public expect us to have the you know, for us to have our best day on their worst day, and for us to have our best day on their worst day. We need to have the tools of trade to be effective in their time of need.
Yeah.
We we are a workforce that want to do good work for our communities and we don't want to be making excuses. And I think the question to the minister is what level of performance is okay for our community? And I think we've already we've already got worse than what is okay for many communities around New Zealand, and nobody knows that the performance has slowly been degrading and that is our problem. We have to have our communities know that Feinsi's performance is reducing.
Terry and Josh thanks for joining us.
Cre're welcome.
For a response from fire an emergency New Zealand.
Have a look in the show notes below.
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzedherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also our sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts
And tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.