Source: Radio New Zealand
An aerial appliance. FIRE AND EMERGENCY NZ / SUPPLIED
Operators of the country’s largest fire trucks with the longest ladders are going to get a bigger say in a long overdue national strategy.
“I have invited specialist aerial frontline firefighters to provide those insights and they are scheduled to start meeting in early December 2025,” deputy national commander Megan Stiffler told RNZ.
Fire and Emergency was told five years ago to come up with a plan for what type of big trucks it needs and where to put them, but has not.
A big-ladder truck, called an aerial, had to travel two hours from Auckland to a big fire on Tuesday at Port Whangārei.
The Professional Firefighters’ Union said a strategy was crucial to answer questions like whether Northland needed its own aerial, or Tauranga, given both had ports and industry where the extra reach of an aerial to fight a fire can be crucial.
“Probably the most important [thing] is how are those aerials going to be staffed. Because if we’re adding extra trucks there, it may be that we need to add extra firefighter positions,” union national vice-president Martin Campbell said.
The inquiry into the 2019 Auckland international convention fire told FENZ to hurry up with a strategy for replacing aerials.
“Here we are, six years, still not done,” Campbell said.
“Now… Megan Stiffler has come and joined the organisation and recognised that what they’ve been working on wasn’t fit for purpose, so it’s pretty much having to go back to the drawing board.”
FENZ only revealed its change of tack late on Wednesday after RNZ asked why the strategy had been in draft form for at least six months.
“Fire and Emergency New Zealand recognised the draft strategy needed further consultation with frontline operators to ensure insights and contributions captured operational needs and experience,” Stiffler said in a statement.
The meeting with operators had been pushed back to next month at the unions’ request, to allow firefighters to have input to FENZ’s proposed mass restructure, she said.
How long now? Union asks
Campbell said Stiffler asked him two months ago about which experts to include.
“To her credit, she has taken up that advice and has shoulder-tapped some of those people,” he said.
“Hopefully it doesn’t mean we’re going to have to sit and wait for another five years before something’s produced.”
Lock the right people away and they could produce a strategy in two months, he said.
However, the restructure had meant everything that was “not critical has been put on the back burner”.
On Tuesday, FENZ said a draft of the aerial strategy was under active development, which was the same thing it had said in May.
It refused to release the draft on the grounds that was likely to inhibit officials working on it, and “could compromise the quality of the final advice and decision-making process”.
Later, it said it was going back to the operators.
“At least now, Megan has recognised the need for operational input from firefighters,” Campbell said.
Campbell said a working group that included firefighters had input to an initial aerial strategy draft.
“Unfortunately, it seems those recommendations weren’t acted upon.”
The union last saw the draft two years ago, when it told FENZ it was not fit for purpose, he said.
He had since made multiple Official Information Act requests to get a copy but had been refused.
Delay getting new aerials
There were already five new aerials on order, however, FENZ said they were a year late – instead of getting them in mid-2025 it would now be mid-2026.
Together worth over $11m, the five have been on order since at least the Loafers Lodge fire in 2023, and since last year had been getting bodywork and lockers done in Wellington and Brisbane.
Only the main centres that already had an aerial would get one of the new ones: Auckland the one with the longest 45m ladder; and Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin would each get a new 32m-ladder truck.
In addition, various brigades had trucks with 17m ladders (about 20 trucks all up).
The 29 larger-ladder trucks are on average 20 years old – the newest 12 and oldest 39 years old. Some may be retired when the five new ones arrive.
The union had protested since at least 2018 that a lack of aerial trucks and the old ones breaking down, were putting lives at risk, which FENZ had routinely disputed.
The readiness of the country’s whole fire truck fleet had been a feature of the ongoing industrial dispute between the two sides.
Earlier this month FENZ said it had inherited an ageing fleet in 2017 but had a fleet programme that had replaced 317 fire trucks, with 78 more in the pipeline, including heavy aerial trucks. Many of the others were smaller utes.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
