New Zealand Fire Service

Responsibility

The New Zealand Fire Service was predominantly configured as an Urban Fire & Rescue Service. The Fire Service Act placed responsibility on the NZFS for firefighting in gazetted Urban Fire Districts, totalling about 3% of New Zealand's land area but covering 85% of the country's population. The remainder of the land was covered by Rural Fire Authorities (RFAs) that acted under the Forest and Rural Fires Act. Fire Service brigades responded outside their Districts to deal with structure and rescue incidents, and usually undertook the initial suppression attack on wildland fires.

Note: The New Zealand Department of Conservation was a RFA with responsibility for firefighting within recognised State areas, including National Parks, totalling about 30% of the country. The New Zealand Defence Force remains responsible for all Defence Areas as defined through the Defence Act. With these two agencies included, the NZFS and territorial local authority RFAs formed the bulk of the firefighting capability in New Zealand. There continues some contribution from Industry Fire Brigades (those run by commercial entities, for example forestry companies or Airport Authorities).

Central Government

The entire organisation reported to the Minister of Internal Affairs, by way of the New Zealand Fire Service Commission. The Commission was composed of five members, and the Minister was required by law to appoint at least one person who was either a fire engineer or had experience as a senior operational fire fighter. The New Zealand Fire Service Commission was also the National Rural Fire Authority.

Chief Executive / National Commander

Beneath the Commission were the positions of Chief Executive and National Commander. At the time of dissolution both positions were filled by Paul McGill. Where the Chief Executive did not have operational fire fighting experience, a separate National Commander was appointed to be the most senior operational fire fighter in the country. The National Commander may have taken control at a particularly serious incident, though this happened very rarely.

The Chief Executive had a number of direct reports, though these were concerned with matters such as human resources and finance rather than operational matters.

Chain of Command

The country is broken into five fire regions: Region 1 (Northland/Auckland), Region 2 (Waikato/Bay of Plenty/Gisborne), Region 3 (Lower North Island), Region 4 (South Island north of the Waitaki River), and Region 5 (South Island south of the Waitaki River). Each region is in the charge of a Fire Region Commander. All FRCs report directly to the National Commander, and are promoted from the ranks of operational staff. An FRC may take control of a major incident, and is ultimately responsible for any incident at which they are present even if they are not the Officer-in-Charge.

Reporting to the Fire Region Commander are the Area Commanders and Assistant Area Commanders who manage the 24 areas contained within the regions. The areas are:

• Region 1: Muri-Whenua, Whangarei-Kaipara, Waitemata, Auckland City, Counties-Manukau
• Region 2: Waikato, East Waikato, Bay of Plenty Coast, Central Lakes, Tairawhiti
• Region 3: Hawke's Bay, Taranaki, Wanganui, Manawatu, Hutt-Wairarapa, Wellington
• Region 4: Tasman-Marlborough, West Coast, Canterbury, Christchurch City, South Canterbury
• Region 5: Central-North Otago, East Otago, Southland

Assistant Area Commanders are primarily responsible for managing the career districts, while the Area Commanders have overall responsibility for the area as well as for the volunteer Chief Fire Officers of each volunteer fire districts within their areas. These are the officers who are ultimately entrusted – via the Fire Service Act – with the powers that are exercised at the scene of an incident to 'deal with' the emergency. These powers are far-reaching – they provide authority to commandeer, demolish or destroy whatever is required in the course of their duties, given no more suitable options.

Each Chief Fire Officer (CFO) will have a Deputy Chief Fire Officer (DCFO) and a number of Senior Station Officers (SSOs) and Station Officers (SOs) reporting to them. The minimum number of firefighters required to man an appliance is four – an officer-in-charge, a driver/pump operator, and two firefighters – although most appliances are equipped to carry an extra two firefighters.

• Station Officer (SO) – In charge of the crew and the officer with the delegated authority of the CFO at any response.
• Senior Firefighter (SFF) – an SFF is an experienced Firefighter who is in a position to provide leadership in the absence of a Station Officer. Suitably qualified SFFs may stand in for an SO on a temporary basis.
• Qualified Firefighter (QFF)
• Firefighter (FF) – the baseline rank within the Fire Service.

An SSO may run in place of an SO as required or at their own discretion. In career districts the SSOs are strategically located to provide a more experienced command officer who is usually placed such that they are responded to most incidents of significance.

Career staff

The New Zealand Fire Service employed 1,713 professional career firefighters, 444 support staff and 80 communication centre staff.

Each career fire station has a number of watches (shifts). Full-time career stations have four watches, red, brown, blue and green, rotating on a "four-on four-off" schedule: two 10-hour day shifts, followed by two 14-hour night shifts, followed by four days off. Combination career and volunteer stations may have a yellow watch, in which career staff work four 10-hour day shifts per calendar week, having one weekday, Saturday and Sunday off. Non-operational staff are "black watch", and work a regular 40-hour week.^[3]

Career Firefighters respond to 70–80% of the incidents the NZFS attends and protect 80% of the population.

Career firefighters numbers are relatively stable with low turnover. The Fire Service usually recruits twice-yearly, and can receive up to 700 applications for just 48 positions on each intake, making competition high and job prospects poor compared to other industries.^[4] Initial training for career firefighters is done on an intensive 12-week residential course at the national training centre in Rotorua that covers not only traditional firefighting subjects but others required of a modern professional Fire and Rescue Service. Topics such as; urban search and rescue (USAR), motor vehicle extrication and hazardous materials.

Career firefighters provide the NZFS personnel that staff the nations specialised USAR Response teams. Additional specialised training is provided for these personnel, however all paid career firefighters are trained to a baseline USAR 'Responder' level.

Volunteers

Career firefighters make up only 20 percent of the New Zealand Fire Service's firefighting manpower; the remaining 80 percent of firefighters are volunteers, who receive no payment for their time or labour. The 8,300 volunteer firefighters belong to the 360 volunteer fire brigades,^[1] mainly serving small towns, communities and outer suburbs which career stations do not cover, and respond to 20–30% of all incidents the New Zealand Fire Service attends.

Volunteer firefighters have diverse backgrounds; around 14 percent are women, compared to just 2.8 percent in the career ranks.^[1] Volunteers are on-call; when an emergency call comes through, firefighters are alerted through pagers and a siren atop the fire station.

The minimum age to become a volunteer firefighter in the New Zealand Fire Service is 16, although those under 18 require parental consent.^[5][6] Initial training is done within the local volunteer fire brigade at their weekly training nights and culminates in a seven-day residential recruit course, normally held at the National Training Centre (NTC) in Rotorua or the Woolston Training Centre in Christchurch. Training includes hose drills, ladder drills, portable pumps, and breathing apparatus use (BA), which is carried out in BATB (Breathing Apparatus Training Building) and RFTB (Realistic Fire Training Building) simulators. The BATB is a gas-fired training facility and the RFTB is a live fire scenario.

Volunteer units within the NZFS organisation also provide support services over and above the role of the Firefighter. Various Operational Support Units (OSUs) manned by volunteers are attached to Fire Districts and Brigades across New Zealand, which provide non-firefighting assistance at large-scale incidents. These include traffic and crowd control, scene cordons and lighting, basic first aid, salvage, communications and logistics, and even catering.^[7] The biggest of them, Auckland Operational Support Unit, also known as the Auckland Volunteer Fire Brigade, was founded in 1933 and provides a true voluntary community service. Its members get no payment for expenses incurred and time spent at emergencies. The Unit is the biggest volunteer fire brigade or unit in New Zealand with a membership of 60 and in the 2015 calendar year, members responded to more than 700 incidents.^[8]

Insignia

New Zealand Fire Service flag

A new colour scheme for helmets was introduced in August 2013, and rolled out in late 2013. Previously, yellow helmets were issued to Firefighters and Station Officers, white helmets to Chief Fire Officers, Area Commanders and Assistant National Commanders, with markings being the only discerning features. The changes saw Station Officer helmets change to red (trainee firefighter helmets, which were red, changed to green), and Area Commander and Assistant National Commander helmets change to silver. The change was to make it easier to identify the command structure at a large-scale, multi-agency incident.^[9]

The epaulette markings used by the New Zealand Fire Service are identical to those used by the New Zealand Police and the New Zealand Army, except for the use of impellers instead of pips.

Pumping appliances

The basic appliance in New Zealand is the Pump Tender, which is primarily equipped for fires. Typical equipment includes a pump (normally driven off the appliance engine via a power take-off); a high pressure hose reel for small fires and initial attack; a supply of high-pressure and low-pressure hoses for larger fires; fire-fighting foam; a standpipe and bar for accessing fire hydrants, and suction hoses for accessing non-reticulated water supplies; forcible entry tools such as Halligan bars, axes and sledgehammers; aluminium and wooden ladders; and a first aid kit with an automated external defibrillator.

The two major variations on the Pump Tender are the Pump Aerial Tender and the Pump Rescue Tender. The Pump Aerial Tender has an additional aerial ladder and monitor for high-rise and aerial attacks. The Pump Rescue Tender, in addition to firefighting equipment, carries extra equipment primarily for motor vehicle accidents and vehicle extrication. Typical equipment includes hydraulic rescue tools (aka "The Jaws of Life"), vehicle stabilisation equipment, and winches.

Most new pumping appliances for the New Zealand Fire Service are manufactured by the Fraser Engineering Group in Lower Hutt, and based on Iveco, Scania and most recently MAN chassis.^[13] Other maunufacturers and chassis including Hino, Dennis, Mitsubishi/Fuso, International, Dodge, Bedford and Mack have been used in the past.

There are four sizes of pumping appliances, named Type 1 through Type 5:

• The Type 1 "Light" appliance is used in both urban and rural areas. It has a rear-mounted 1900 L/min pump with one low-pressure hose reel, a 2000 L onboard water tank, and around 5.2 m² of locker space. New appliances are typically built on Iveco Eurocargo chassis.^[14]
• The Type 2 "Medium" appliance is used in both urban and rural areas. It has the same features as the Type 1, but has an additional high-pressure hose reel and around 1.3 m² extra locker space. New appliances are typically built on Iveco Eurocargo chassis.^[15]
• The Type 3 "Heavy" appliance is used in urban areas. It has a mid-mounted 3800 L/min pump with two high-pressure hose reels, and a 1400 L onboard water tank. Since 2015, new appliances have typicallybeen built on MAN TGM chassis; prior to this they were typically built on Scania P-series chassis.^[16]
• The Type 4 "Heavy Aerial" or "Bronto" appliance is used in urban areas. It has the same features as the Type 3, but is also fitted with a 17-metre aerial ladder and monitor. New appliances are typically built on Scania P-series chassis.^[17]
• The Type 5 & 6 "Heavy Aerial" or "Bronto" appliance is used in urban/city areas. It has the same features as the Type 4, but is fitted with a 32-metre aerial ladder and montior, instead of a 17-metre. Some of the 32-metre appliances do not consist of any pumps, whereas some Type 5/6's do.

Pump Tender identification numbers ends in 1, 2 or 3 (e.g. Onehunga 221, Manurewa 301, Hastings 561); Pump Aerial Tender identification numbers end in 4, 5 or 6 (e.g. Ellerslie 274, Auckland 205, Parnell 256); and Pump Rescue Tender (PRT) identification numbers end in 7 (e.g. Auckland 207, Papatoetoe 347, Christchurch 217)

Specialist appliances

Career staff appliances may also carry more specialised items used for industrial rescue, light USAR and high-angle line rescue. In some areas, these are carried on separate Rescue Tenders or Emergency Tenders which do not have pumping capabilities.

Additional specialist appliances are usually strategically located in each fire district. Typyical appliances, their functions and identification numbers are as followed:

• Hydraulic elevating platforms with aerial monitor ("Snorkel") – non-pumping, typically 32 metres (105 ft) long (5)
• Turntable ladders – non-pumping, typically 32 metres (105 ft) long. (6)
• Technical (Heavy) Rescue Tender – Auckland Fire District only (8)
• Water tankers, to assist in water supply at properties or in areas without a reticulated supply (11)
• Hoselayers (12)
• Breathing Apparatus Tenders, to supply extra breathing apparatus cylinders and mobile cylinder refilling at major incidents (15)
• Command vehicles, to act as a mobile communications centre and incident control point at major incidents (14 or 18)
• Hazardous Materials Response (Hazmat) (16 or 18)
• Operational Support Vehicles (26, 28, 29)
• Lighting & Power Generation Units
• Fire Medical Vehicle (FMV) – prototype combination pump tender and medical first response vehicle.^[18]

CIMS

The New Zealand Fire Service was one of the key developers of the Coordinated Incident Management System which is now in widespread use throughout the NZ Emergency Services environment. This provides for a common set of terminology and procedures which lends itself to multi-agency incidents.

Pre-Fire Service

• Ballantyne's fire, 1947 – on 18 November 1947, a fire broke out at the Ballantyne's department store in central Christchurch, killing 41 people. It remains the deadliest fire in New Zealand.
• Seacliff Lunatic Asylum fire, 1942 – on the evening of 8 December 1942, a fire broke out in Ward 5 at the Seacliff Lunatic Asylum, north of Dunedin, killing 28 of the 39 female patients housed within. A shortage of nursing staff due to World War II, as well as the lack of sprinklers in the ward, contributed to the deaths.