A “catastrophic failure” of a fire truck responding to a Hamilton fire highlights how under-resourced firefighters are, the New Zealand Professional Firefighters Union (NZPFU) says.
But Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) says issues like this can and do occur, and crews are trained and highly skilled to cope.
Six fire crews responded to a garage fire in Flagstaff late Thursday night. On arrival they were met with a fully involved house fire.
Hamilton local secretary for the NZPFU Jay Culhane said that while in the middle of fighting the fire, Te Rapa’s pumping appliance lost the ability to pump water.
“There was a catastrophic failure of the pump, so they lost water pressure to the firefighters, both to the internal and external firefighting crew,” Culhane said.
The crew inside the house had to withdraw from the building, and the external firefighters had to move away.
“The biggest problem is a fire doubles in size every thirty-seconds so the delay in operations … you are going to lose more property and suffer more damage.”
Pumping operations were quickly swapped over to the Chartwell pump truck which began pumping water to continue fighting the fire.
There were no reports of injuries to the firefighters.
However, Culhane said more incidents like this were happening and poor planning and under-resourcing were to blame.
“You can service an old truck as much as you want but they are still going to have issues,” he said.
A FENZ spokesperson said it had a fleet of around 1300 firefighting trucks.
“Our firefighting trucks are well maintained, safe, certified, and legally compliant. We have a strict schedule for regular maintenance and repairs.
“We typically spend more than $20 million each financial year on new firefighting trucks and other vehicles. In 2023/24 we spent $26 million, in 2024/25 we spent $20 million, and in 2025/26 we will spend $29 million.”
The spokesperson said since FENZ was established in 2017, it had purchased 317 new firefighting trucks.
rnz.co.nz
