A real community effort
To misappropriate R.E.M., this one goes out to the ones they’ve left behind. The community effort for the Pigeon Valley fire has come from so many corners, and not least of all from the firefighters who have thrown themselves into the fight.
Less prominent are the people behind these heroes who make quiet sacrifices, and they’re worth their own little flicker in the spotlight.
A few months ago, I was walking down Motueka’s High St when the fire siren sounded. Seconds later, a staff member from the adjacent Placemakers bolted across the road, instantly switching roles from shop assistant to volunteer fire fighter.
I found myself idly thinking, ‘‘I wonder if he’s still on the clock?’’
Here’s the thing: he was. A lot of the businesses who employ volunteer firefighters take that on the chin, which means they roll with the inconvenience of having staff members suddenly disappear.
Financially, those businesses also make a pretty phenomenal community donation by paying wages for staff who are not on the floor.
Nelson’s brigade is paid, but the rest of the district is supported by volunteers, which equates to many dozens of people overall. Motueka’s brigade has 31 firefighters, Wakefield has 21, Takaka has 22, and those are just of few of our local brigades, because each community within the region has its own force.
Motueka’s fire chief, Mike Riddell, said his team were currently spending seven or eight hours per person each week attending to the BAU or ‘‘business as usual’’ events – there have been more than 50 callouts already this year for the Motueka brigade alone, and this is above and beyond the colossal Pigeon Valley fire campaign.
We all hear the sirens – many of these callouts happen in work time, which means that those employers are paying and covering for staff who are absent.
Philip Woolf sees it from both sides, because he is both the Takaka fire chief and the co-owner of the Motueka and Takaka ITM stores. The two stores employ seven fire volunteers between them.
It can be inconvenient, he said, but as employers they regarded it as their community contribution.
‘‘Not everyone sees it like that,’’ he said, ‘‘and not everyone is in a position to support that.’’
Of course, a balance must be struck between supporting the community and maintaining a business. Some of the volunteers are now taking unpaid leave so that they can continue to do shifts at the front line of the fire. They do so, mind, alongside paid contractors.
Do they resent that disparity, I asked Mike. ‘‘No, not really,’’ he said, ‘‘because we don’t think of it that way.’’ He said it was starting to get taxing, though, getting into the second week of the campaign and still being asked to come up with crews to help. ‘‘And we will do it.’’
Wakefield chief fire officer Fritz Buckendahl was eager to extend praise to the self-employed volunteers, saying that they should get a lot of the credit.
‘‘There is no one to pay them. They’re the people I take my hat off to, because they’re just directly taking the cash out of their pocket.’’
The other unsung heroes, alongside the employers of these amazing individuals, are the families behind them.
Social media offered some heartwrenching messages from partners whose pride in their other halves was just as evident as their quiet desperation to have them home safe.
We’ve got to admire their dedication, even outside of a state-ofemergency event like this, because this type of volunteering creates an ongoing interruption to family life.
These partners are suddenly soldiering through the kids’ bedtime on their own, again, or changing their social plans because their partner answered their beeper and bolted to a call-out.
There’s not a lot of glory in being the ones left behind, but Mike said that the families were every bit as much a part of the organisation as their fire-fighting partners.
‘‘They’re the ones the people don’t see. They contribute just as much as the fire fighters do. It’s a big organisation, because we don’t just count the firemen.’’
Being a volunteer’s partner did have its challenges, Fritz agreed.
‘‘I used to leave the tea table, and they all knew what it meant.’’
He said that to be a good volunteer, you needed your partner’s support. You simply couldn’t do it without their blessing.
The firefighters are a pretty humble bunch, and the chiefs were eager to deflect the accolades in favour of everyone else involved – the army, police, airforce, the logistics and management teams, as well as the communities who put their trust in the services and bravely followed what were undoubtedly some distressing directives.
When I suggested the firefighters themselves couldn’t be praised enough for being, as Mike put it, ‘‘the only people between the community and the red stuff’’, he protested firmly that that wasn’t the point.
‘‘They don’t do it for the praise,’’ he insisted. It was about giving back to the community they live in.
So yes, to the men and women who continue to run from your daily lives and towards the red stuff, you’re amazing.
And to the men and women who support them in their workplaces and in their homes, we know what you sacrifice. You’re amazing too.
We’ve got to admire their dedication, even outside of a state-ofemergency event like this, because this type of volunteering creates an ongoing interruption to family life.