Wanted: More volunteers for fire brigade
The Nga¯ ruawa¯ hia Volunteer Fire Brigade needs more volunteers after seeing an increase in the number of call-outs.
They have 25 volunteers, but with their calls going from about 150 in 2012 to around 350 a year, they need more hands to the pump.
Chief fire officer Karl Lapwood said they need to recruit at least 10 more volunteers to be able to keep up with the station demand.
The increase started after the Fire and Emergency New Zealand Act 2017 was brought in, which saw an increase in the amount of events rural brigades could be sent to.
Lapwood said they attended everything now, from river rescues, cardiac events, crashes, even people injuring themselves up the Hakarimata Summit Hiking Track. Three quarters of their brigade worked out of town, so Lapwood said they needed people who could attend jobs during the day.
‘‘We got five cardiac arrests during the week and the same people all go.’’
Volunteering allows you to learn new skills, such as first aid, but it’s also social, he said.
Juleen Alphors has been volunteering in the operational support side of the brigade for the past 17 years. Joining in her late 40s she said initially she didn’t think she had any skills she could bring to the table. But her son convinced her to go down and have a chat, and she’s been coming back ever since.
Being a volunteer brigade she said they relied on funding, so applying for grants and getting donations from the community was part of the job.
Part of her role in the support unit was assisting at calls, so providing lighting at scenes, salvage management and managing road closures.
They had an operational support unit that was envied around the North Island as it had everything you could think of to support responding emergency services crews, including a barbecue.
Some hard parts of volunteering were when the incidents involved children, suicides or cardiac arrests, she said.