New immigrant Randy will help whole community
The Te Awamutu Volunteer Fire Brigade received a new energy boost for their Firefighter Challenge training as the haupō Ngāhinapōuri Lions Club donated a $6100 Rescue Randy training dummy.
Training dummies are a valuable resource for brigade members’ training, particularly for the Firefighter Challenge — an annual Ironman-like contest which many Te Awamutu members compete in.
After competing at the Firefighter Challenge World Championships last year, senior firefighter Rob Wiley and fellow competitor Jodi Reymer were asked at an haupō Ngāhinapōuri Lions Club meeting to speak about their experiences.
“They mentioned that their Rescue Randy dummy was well and truly worn out. We picked up on the idea of buying them one. Rescue Randy came from the US and has taken a few months to arrive, but he’s here,”
haupō Ngāhinapōuri Lions Club treasurer Ross Karl said.
“We had assistance from the Lions Banking Trust (Central ¯NorthO Island) and Randy has been greatly received. The fire brigade are rapt.”
Wiley said for a small Lions club to show interest in the brigade’s ventures was “warming”.
“At the Firefighter Challenge World Championship, Jodi was third in the world in women’s and in my age group I came ninth,” Wiley said.
“To our surprise, the Lions decided to donate the whole [Rescue Randy] unit. It was $6500 or thereabouts including the shipping. It was overwhelming, amazing really.
“We as volunteers do a lot of things for the community and we don’t expect anything back, but for something like that to come back to us is warming.”
The New Zealand Firefighter Challenge season is from March through to May, so the Te Awamutu Volunteer Fire team is well into training and is excited to be able to continue this with a brand new dummy.
Chief fire officer Ian Campbell said Te Awamutu firefighters are lucky to have the facilities at their station to set up a training course, which finishes with a 30m drag of Rescue Randy.
“Our current training dummies have had years of dragging along the course, and many repairs done over that time, so it’s great to be able to continue with this competition training with new equipment.
“We have lots of recruits and experienced members that will benefit using the dummy when simulating rescues,” Wiley said. “It will benefit the whole community in the long run.”