PHOTO CREDIT: 1NEWS

Members will no doubt be aware of Wednesday's major fire in a scrapyard in Papakura. Whilst the cause of this fire is still under investigation what is known is that the impacts of it were widespread right across Auckland.

The fire saw huge plumes of smoke drift right across the city, resulting in emergency text alerts to residents to shelter in place, close all doors and windows and turn off Air Conditioning Units.

Due to the potential toxicity of the smoke and the substances on fire, all members are reminded to enter a safe at work entry into the kiosk recording your exposure. 

The fire involved the attendance of multiple career and volunteer crews from across Auckland for many hours, taking them away from protecting their local communities. 

All of Auckland's high reach ladder aerial trucks were sent to the fire, with several aerials and pumps breaking down. For many hours Auckland was left with NO aerial ladder trucks, with the next closest being in Hamilton. Many other emergency incidents occurred concurrently to this fire that should have had an aerial appliance responded to them but couldn’t as they were either broken down or tied up at this fire.

The list of trucks that broke down or required mechanical repairs at the fire are as follows:

• Te Atatu Aerial
  Major transmission failure
  
  
• Mt Wellington Rescue Tender
  Pump Failure during firefighting operations
  
  
• Mangere Pump
  Break Down

• Papatoetoe Aerial
  Break Down
  
  
• Manurewa Pump
  Intercooler failure (note this fault has occurred over 22 times across this particular model of fire truck in FENZs fleet)

These types of major fires are unfortunately not new in Auckland and are now a regular occurrence. The increase in frequency and severity of fires in urban areas are causing a strain on firefighters staffing, fleet and equipment. A recent article warns that New Zealand faces a 40% jump in city fires under “worst case” warming scenario.

Fire trucks breaking down on a regular basis is completely unacceptable, for it to occur at a fire whilst firefighting operations are underway places firefighters and members of the public lives in danger, as well as being an unacceptable risk to property and the environment.

Fire and Emergency states that its fleet is well maintained to a high standard and serviced regularly, why then is the average age of the fleet now over 20 years old? 

Our Service providers are doing their very best having to maintain very old trucks, constantly source parts from overseas for trucks that haven’t been in production for decades, and respond on call after hours to constant and repeated break downs and failures of old trucks.

The fact so many of them are so old and have not been replaced is due to failures in strategic long term vision and decision-making of the Fire and Emergency Board, and the Fire and Emergency Executive Leadership, and this is the reason that they are constantly breaking down.

Officers are reminded that if Fire and Emergency are unable to provide a safe acceptable relief fire truck then you shall contact the on call Executive Officer and advise them of the situation. That Executive Officer will then need to arrange for the crew to uplift a Type 3 Volunteer appliance for the crew to use until a suitable replacement can be sourced.

Any questions please contact your Local Station representative.