Volunteers feel the burn
Kiwi firefighters are often the heart of remote communities – but their roles are tougher than ever, report Dave Nicoll, Daisy Hudson, Brooke Bath.
In June 1980, Stewart Island firefighters in their first response Land Rover reached a house fire only to find their pump wasn’t working. Fine, they thought, Oban Volunteer Fire Brigade’s ‘‘Big Bertha’’ Bedford fire truck was close behind with more firefighters on board – except it wasn’t, it had blown a drive shaft and was going nowhere.
By the time the crew had commandeered the district nurse’s Jeep and reached the scene, the house was a pile of smouldering ash.
Fighting fires in isolated, small communities can be a tough task.
Though they may attend fewer call-outs than other crews (five to date for 2016), the Oban fire brigade is vital for the few hundred people on Stewart Island – and as they mark their 50th anniversary, they are facing the same problems as other volunteer Kiwi crews: declining populations, longer work hours, fewer volunteers. Money is tight and – at least in Oban – water is short.
The Government’s response is a $303 million overhaul of fire services to create an organisation ‘‘fit for the 21st century’’. The NZ Fire Service, mainly responsible for urban New Zealand, will merge with the National Rural Fire Authority and more than 40 other rural fire services to form Fire and Emergency New Zealand.
Of that cash pot, $191m is earmarked for funding gaps in rural fire services and providing more support, equipment and training to volunteers. And many firefighters believe the money can’t come soon enough.
Because many rural communities are beyond the easy reach of emergency services, volunteer fire crews play a central, pivotal role.
Stewart Island’s brigade was born on April 14, 1966, after a public meeting raised £248, first volunteers were trained and a Gwynne Trailer Pumping Unit was bought from the Invercargill Fire Board for £80 and stored in a leanto shed in the dog pound site. A hand-operated siren was set up.
Chief firefighter Jarrod Baird says island firefighters face different challenges to their mainland colleagues. ‘‘Firstly, the island does not have a reticulated water supply. The fire brigade pumps water out of tanks or the ocean.’’
And, secondly, the fire brigade has no immediate back-up.
But although many of the 19 volunteers work on boats or at the salmon farms, they have always balanced their duties with fighting fires, Baird says.
Call-outs include the standard house fires, accidents, medical events and rescue operations, but also pumping out boats that have hit the rocks. On occasion they have to travel via helicopters or boats. ‘‘We might not have a call for three or four months, then we’ll get a couple. It seems to run in threes and fours.’’
Southland Fire Commander Bruce Stubbs says the Oban brigade is unusually well-equipped for a small brigade.
The brigade had extra pumps, more hoses, equipment to recharge their breathing apparatus and rescue equipment for vehicle accidents. ‘‘There’s more than enough resources there to deal with the risk they have got,’’ he insists.
‘‘If we needed to back them up we can get in a helicopter here, throw our rescue gear in and fly over and help them.’’
In the small South Canterbury town of Glenavy, everyone knows everyone. But, more importantly, as the town’s Chief Fire Officer Bevin Joyce points out, everyone looks after everyone.
This town is like so many others in rural Canterbury: the main street is SH1, the store serves as supermarket, corner dairy, and cafe all rolled into one, often with a few pairs of muddy gumboots lined up beside the front door.
It has a sense of community that sees people quickly volunteer for a school working bee, or to deliver firewood to a needy neighbour, Joyce says.
It was also that sense of community that prompted the town’s volunteer fire brigade to up their expertise and take on the challenge of first-responder training.
The qualification means 17 of the brigade’s 22 members can respond to a range of medical calls instead of just enough first aid to keep someone alive until help arrives.
It’s an important – and lifesaving – step up for the town, given that the closest ambulance can be as far as 45 minutes away.
Joyce recalls attending a motorbike crash on a rural property in the area. The nearest ambulance would usually be in Waimate, about 20 minutes away, but that wasn’t available.
‘‘We were waiting for an ambulance from Timaru, it was in quite a rural, remote roading area. It took about 40 minutes for the ambulance to arrive.’’
It beat a rescue helicopter scrambled from Dunedin by just 10 minutes.
Now, Joyce says, help can be there in as quickly as five minutes. ‘‘It’s a peace of mind thing,’’ he says. ‘‘Since we’ve been accredited, we’ve been to two heart attacks, and one person who was a diabetic and who passed out. That was in the last 10 days.’’
The Glenavy brigade attend about 30 or 40 medical calls each year, Joyce says. That includes ‘‘a lot’’ of car crashes, as well as general medical incidents.
Becoming first responders would mean an increased workload, and Joyce was wary of that. ‘‘I don’t want people to say ‘this is just too much’.’’
More than 80 per cent of the New Zealand Fire Service’s firefighters are volunteers and Deputy National Commander Paul McGill says numbers are the strongest they’ve been to date.
Over the past week, the Fire Service has been advertising for volunteers on the Neighbourly social network. There are 8300 volunteers in the NZ Fire Service; a further 3500 with the National Rural Fire Authority. Some brigades have been serving communities for over 150 years.
‘‘Most of our volunteer firefighters have very long service and they really are fully responsible for the service they run in the community,’’ says McGill. ‘‘Most of these brigades have been going for a long time and it’s been sustained by an ongoing effort of people who are very generous of their time.’’
McGill says the top reasons why people put their hand up is to serve their community and protect and save lives.
‘‘They’re in New Zealand’s most remote and small communities, so they really respond to local community need – whatever it is. Often they’re the only response in those communities . . . this is why some people join and why they stay in the brigade. There’s a strong sense of purpose.’’
But the population is growing faster, and most significantly for the rural brigades, the population is drifting away from provincial towns and into the cities. So volunteers have had to adapt. Crews like the Glenavy brigade who have upgraded to becoming medical first responders, attend 10,000 medical incidents a year. They are also taking on policing roles, too.
‘‘There are 50 brigades across the country who are classified as first responders who are trained to a higher level by the ambulance services because they’re in communities where there is not an ambulance service nearby,’’ McGill says. ‘‘There’s a lot of people’s lives being saved through that arrangement.
‘‘What has changed is the Fire Service now takes a much wider range of roles than we did a couple of decades ago. Urban search and rescue, a whole range of rescue activities and medical coresponse.’’
At the heart of volunteer firefighters’ service to their communities, is an innate heroism. Some, like 52-year-old Mid-Canterbury firefighter Barry Keen who died in 2009 when a burning tree branch fell on him as his crew turned up at a stubble burn-off at Willowby, near Ashburton, give their lives.
Others contribute to the thousands of stories of bravery and saved lives.
Christchurch Senior Firefighter Scott Shadbolt was awarded the Valour Medal for his exceptional bravery assisting others after the Christchurch earthquake, rescuing a man trapped in the collapsed sixstorey Pyne Gould Corporation building. Accompanied by two doctors and a police officer, Scott worked in a confined space amputating the man’s legs using improvised tools and enduring numerous aftershocks. The man was successfully rescued – but Scott continued to work at the building following this act until late into the night.
In Glenavy, they are not too short of volunteers: their 22 members are just two short of full capacity.
Joyce puts that down to being part of a small community. ‘‘Not one of them has an ego, they’re only in it to help the community,’’ he says. ‘‘We tend to look after ourselves.’’