Source: Radio New Zealand
The Tongariro National Park wildfire, as seen from an aircraft on 10 November. Fire and Emergency NZ
Experts in using planes and choppers to fight fires like the Tongariro blaze have withdrawn labour in a pay dispute that dates back years.
This reduced the after-hours backup Fire and Emergency (FENZ) could call on for the 2800ha blaze in Tongariro National Park – but it said it made no difference.
The fire had up to 15 helicopters and five planes waterbombing it.
“This withdrawal of labour associated to backpay involves three personnel and this has not impacted our overall capability for air attack,” Deputy National Commander Megan Stiffler said in a statement late on Tuesday.
The dispute revolves around some of FENZ’s most experienced aviation firefighters in its small airdesk support group, that since 2021 has helped run national air firefighting operations.
In 2022, the group’s head, Stephen Bishop, asked FENZ for “formal recognition of the work and critical service the air desk support group provides – including remuneration for duty roster and calls as per other FENZ managers – fair and equitable”.
On Monday, Stiffler told RNZ, “The on-call arrangements required to provide aviation support after hours are still being negotiated.”
She added the support function itself was under review.
FENZ was discussing backpay remuneration for the support team and “while this is happening their support is not currently active after-hours”, she said on Tuesday in a separate statement.
“We have aviation operations as normal to respond as required, as we have had at Tongariro this week. We had no issue with having the right capability on the Tongariro incident with no impacts to operations.
“The successful operations confirm the depth of our capability.”
A senior firefighter who is not in the airdesk support group but had details of the problems, described it as a dispute going back at least 18 months. RNZ agreed not to name them.
Their information aligned with internal emails between the airdesk support group and FENZ management in late 2022, released under the Official Information Act.
In one of those emails, Bishop had told a Communications Centre manager Brent Dunn: “I know you agree that the support group is a critical part of the safe, effective function of FENZ national air desk, providing aviation expertise and oversight …
“We are called on many times throughout the year for advice, provide 24/7 roster all year for the team, monitor all aviation requests and dispatches and contact is always there when needed.”
Bishop remains FENZ’s senior specialist in aviation and heavy machinery.
The email trail showed his group plugged a staffing “crisis” at the South Island comms centre that Dunn said was leading to his comms staff “burning out”, and unable to cover the extra duties around dispatching aircraft.
“So we head into the 2023 fire season badly understaffed to manage the airdesk as it was originally intended,” Dunn wrote.
The shortage forced Bishop’s then five-person (now three-person) team to step in, doing the dispatching “pretty much on a daily basis”, tied to a desk for up to 12 hours at a time.
“This additional work is impacting on existing BAU [business-as-usual], fatigue and family time,” Bishop told the agency in late 2022.
In one week, his team did 63 hours on dispatch.
“Given we are now in October and seeing increased aircraft requests which will increase heading towards summer, I am extremely concerned that we will have to continue taking over air desk and that this is not sustainable – the air desk support group runs on good will and passion.”
He then asked for “suitable remuneration for each hour we cover for air desk despatch, I would suggest overtime”.
Dunn told Bishop he appreciated the “weight of pressure” on his team.
“Crazy to think that’s where we are, after the hype and success of last year.”
This was in reference to the national airdesk being embedded into Southern Comms in March 2021.
Eight communications staff got extra training to do air dispatching.
However, by late 2022, Bishop had to get nine more trained up as a temporary stopgap. “This is incredibly disappointing and such a contrast to the hugely successful 18mths [sic] we have just experienced with the air desk,” he emailed management.
FENZ’s new air set-up faced its biggest challenge in Cyclone Gabrielle in early 2023, when it helped send out 3000 flights on 6000 tasks over just a few days, in what was later assessed as a “highly successful aviation operation”.
Wildfires are different from storms – the goal is putting out a fire – but are similar, too, in requiring expert decisions around when and where to use choppers or (usually less expensive) planes, and how to make the airspace safe for them.
Stiffler said on Tuesday that at the Tongariro fire, an incident controller had ensured the right air support and that everyone was safe, and aviation safety was coordinated by “air attack” and air support supervisors on site.
“We are reviewing how we respond to incidents using aircraft and how the incident controller is supported to use aircraft effectively,” she said.
“This review commenced prior to the Tongariro incident.”
FENZ also said it was recruiting six extra air dispatchers “to increase staffing resilience within the dispatch function”.
The senior firefighter told RNZ that a recommendation around on-call allowances for the airdesk support group had been sent on to the deputy chief executives several weeks ago, but they had not made any decision.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
