Breaking Point For The Country's Fire Service After Seven Years And Counting
In this 5-part Series, "Putting Out The Flames" Breaks Down Why The Modern Fire Service Is In Crisis and Tackles What's At Stake At This Critical Juncture.
You should care about this. Fire or no fire.
Pictured: Aaron McKay, fire fighter and local union representative standing today by the city’s one and only 32-meter-ladder fire truck. In this series, we will hear from both Aaron and National President and fellow firefighter Joe Stanley.
The Fire Service plays a crucial role in protecting society and our populace. In this five-part series, “Putting Out the Flames” breaks down the issues and trace the origins of the problems facing fire fighters across the country and in Canterbury.
Traditional fire fighters were expected to fight fire, climb tall buildings and rescue people like you and me from towering infernos. That is a bygone era. In the modern era, modern fire fighters are acting as an on-call stopgap.
Returning to base: the 17-meter fire truck that has replaced our other 32-meter truck located in Wellington rolls into Christchurch’s Central Station.
Episode 1 delved into the uncomfortable statistics that showed a trend amongst the service to attend medical callouts and car accidents, originally the preserve of St. Johns and the surging number of false callouts.
Tomorrow’s episode, the second part in the series, looks at the impact on firefighters of attending suicides and scenes of death and carnage.
Episode 3 examines the unusual relationship between the fire service and St. Johns and the way in which the fire service has become an on-call, free resource at St John’s beck and call.
Episode 4 drills down on resourcing issues at the station level.
And Episode 5 looks into the origin story of the problems through the lense of the 2017 creation of the national body, FENZ, the corporatisation of the fire service, and the use of contractors.
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