Paid firefighters ‘inevitable’ as volunteer pressure mounts

QUEENSTOWN’S firefighters are having to reduce the number of trucks responding to some callouts because of heavily congested traffic.

The news comes as a local assistant area manager acknowledges a paid fire brigade is ‘‘inevitable’’ in Queenstown due to increasing pressure on volunteers.

Fire callouts in the district jumped 22% between April 2015 and April this year.

The Fire and Emergency New Zealand figures, released under the Official Information Act, show there were 704 callouts across the district in the 201516 year.

That jumped to 863 last year. The biggest drivers of the increase were vehicle crashes, medical calls, and rescues.

Assistant area manager Steve Jones said increasing growth in the Queenstown area meant a paid brigade was inevitable.

‘‘It’s a wonderful place to come, but it means there’s more people in hotel rooms, more people on the road, and more people in places where they wouldn’t normally be.’’

Bumpertobumper traffic in Frankton was also causing headaches for firefighters, and potentially slowing response times.

To alleviate the problem, they were implementing a onetruck response to false alarms, Mr Jones said.

False alarms still tied up the most firefighting resources in the district, with 352 callouts last year.

A light response vehicle, based in the Shotover CountryLake Hayes area, has also been introduced to help ferry firefighters to jobs.

An increasing number of medical and crash callouts meant careful monitoring of mental health, Mr Jones said.

‘‘We are aware it’s an issue, and we’re trying to frontfoot it.’’

Queenstown Mayor Jim Boult supported a paid brigade.

‘‘I think our volunteers do an amazing job and we’re lucky to have them. But I do get concerned about the pressure our volunteers, and their employers, are under.’’

He was also not surprised by concerns about emergency service vehicles battling through congested roads.

‘‘We’re keeping the discussions up with NZTA to get further works done.’’