Rise of a volunteer fire brigade
A ute and a trailer – with a hose, water pump and a few tools on board – was the designated firefighting vehicle of the Hedgehope Volunteer Fire Service when Ken Keenan began 25 years ago.
Keenan and the other seven volunteer firefighters of the time didn’t have cellphones, so their wives would often take the callouts at home and track their husbands down on the farm.
‘‘We would jump in the ute and head away,’’ Keenan said.
Fast-forward 25 years and Keenan is still with rural Southland’s Hedgehope brigade, he’s been its fire chief for 18 years, and it’s come a long way.
The brigade now has its own three-bay fire station, there are two fire trucks and a four-wheel-drive ute and the 24 volunteer firefighters carry pagers and cellphones.
Keenan is one of about 11,000 volunteer firefighters in New Zealand who are being celebrated, along with other volunteers across the country, during national volunteer week.
A Fire and Emergency spokeswoman said volunteer firefighters, along with career firefighters, responded to about 79,000 incidents nationwide each year, including firefighting, motor vehicle accidents,
medical emergencies, hazardous substances, maritime incidents, and natural disasters.
Keenan, who also has two sons in the Hedgehope brigade, said its volunteers responded to about 30 callouts a year throughout Southland, and sometimes beyond.
The brigade’s members were farmers, agricultural contractors, truck drivers and engineers who were called out to help out other brigades across Southland.
Most of its callouts were forest fires but in 2010 the rural volunteers helped the Invercargill crew extinguish the big Southtile factory fire in the city.
The Hedgehope fire station was built in 1999 by brigade members, with community funding, and it’s one of the few community-owned stations in the country.
About five years ago the first woman joined and now they have six, with two of them nurses.
The Hedgehope brigade, which was originally established in 1968, couldn’t do without the women, Keenan said.
‘‘We are a co-responder brigade and when we turn up to a car accident or a medical callout our nurses know exactly what to do. It can get pretty sad, those callouts, and we’re glad to just let our nurses do their thing until the ambulance arrives.’’
The Hedgehope volunteers were a great team who trained and worked well together, Keenan said.
‘‘I’ve got a lot of satisfaction watching the team grow, they just get better.’’
He couldn’t have done it without his wife, Marie.
‘‘She runs a pretty good ship with our sheep and beef farm when I’m away and I’ve been away quite a bit.’’
Keenan said an incentive for him and others to keep volunteering was overseas firefighting deployments.
He has fought fires in Australia eight times – twice last summer when the bush fires were unprecedented.