Fire crews under pressure
Fire crews around Waikato are responding to an ‘‘unprecedented’’ number of calls, putting pressure on volunteer brigades.
Nga¯ ruawa¯ hia Volunteer Fire Brigade attended their 85th call for the year yesterday, which fire chief Karl Lapwood said was twice as many calls when compared with 2019.
‘‘The whole district is up simply because it’s been so dry.’’
Meteorologist Stephen Glassey said previously just 9.4mm of rain was recorded for the Waikato for the entire month of January.
"That’s very low and the 18th of January was the last day more than 1mm of rain was recorded across several weather stations in the Waikato.
‘‘This would certainly be one of the longest periods of dry weather the Waikato has experienced in the past 10 years, it’s very unusual.’’
Lapwood said Huntly were up to call 100 for the year and he knew other volunteer stations in Waikato were also seeing an increase.
Because they were volunteer brigades he said attending this number of callouts was detrimental to their own lives.
‘‘It puts pressure on the volunteers going out of work and away from family, so it’s a big ask.
‘‘We are away twice as much.’’ Some of the recent fires they had attended were accidentally lit or people who didn’t realise there was a fire ban in place, but some were people who had just decided to ignore the restriction.
‘‘We had one yesterday in
Nga¯ ruawa¯ hia on the school rugby field.
‘‘Some kids seemed to have lit it, which could have escalated.
‘‘Three trucks from here and Huntly and a tanker [attended].’’
Any scrub fire they were called to at present was instantly escalated to a second alarm because of how dry it was.
He described the increase in calls as making them ‘‘unpleasantly busy’’.
‘‘Huntly, Te Awamutu, Cambridge, they are all in the same boat.
‘‘We have all had unprecedented numbers and [the] calls have been to more large scale scrub fires than what we normally would get.’’
Another issue brigades were facing was the lack of water around the region.
‘‘It’s harder to find water sources.
‘‘There’s a lot of creeks that are dried up.’’
This meant they were having to carry more water to jobs with them in tankers, which meant the seven tankers in the region were flat out.
‘‘A lot of those jobs have been so big there’s been two to three tankers at each job.’’
Waikato fire area commander Daryl Trim said the type of calls and increase in calls meant volunteers were spending more time away from their work and family.
‘‘That’s across all of our brigades.’’
He said at the moment there was a total fire ban so they were asking people not to light any fires.
‘‘Given the conditions little fires people think are going to be OK are getting away and burning hectares at a time.’’
Trim said even if the region received a bit of rain it didn’t mean it was safe to light fires.
‘‘Because of how dry it is it will take a few days of rain.’’
The other issue rain brought was summer ice, which saw the roads become slippery and fire brigades were then called to more crashes.
‘‘It turns the roads into skating rinks.’’
To check fire restrictions head to checkitsalright.nz.