New Zealand Fire Service


The New Zealand Fire Service was New Zealand's main firefighting body from 1 April 1976 until 1 July 2017 – at which point it was dissolved and incorporated into the new Fire and Emergency New Zealand.

Legal Authority

The NZFS was somewhat unusual, internationally, in that it had jurisdiction over the entire country with no division by region or city. It was the result of the New Zealand Fire Service Act, which nationalised the various District-level brigades that had developed across the country.

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 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.

Organisation

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 was broken into five fire regions: Region 1, Region 2, Region 3, Region 4, and Region 5. Each region was in the charge of a Fire Region Commander. All FRCs report directly to the National Commander, and were promoted from the ranks of operational staff. A FRC could take control of a major incident, and was ultimately responsible for any incident at which they are present even if they were not the Officer-in-Charge.
Reporting to the Fire Region Commander were the Area Commanders and Assistant Area Commanders who manage the 24 areas contained within the regions. The areas were:
  • 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 were primarily responsible for managing the career districts, while the Area Commanders had overall responsibility for the area as well as for the volunteer Chief Fire Officers of each volunteer fire districts within their areas. These were 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 were 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 had a Deputy Chief Fire Officer and a number of Senior Station Officers and Station Officers reporting to them. The minimum number of firefighters required to man most appliances was four – an officer-in-charge, a driver/pump operator, and two firefighters – although many appliances were equipped to carry an extra one or two firefighters, operational support staff, or observers.
  • Station Officer – In charge of the crew and the officer with the delegated authority of the CFO at any response.
  • Senior Firefighter – an SFF is an experienced Firefighter who is usually in a position to provide leadership in the absence of a Station Officer. Suitably qualified SFFs may have stood in for an SO on a temporary basis.
  • Qualified Firefighter
  • Firefighter – the baseline rank within the Fire Service.
An SSO may have run in place of an SO as required or at their own discretion. In career districts the SSOs were strategically located to provide a more experienced command officer who is usually placed such that they are responded to most incidents of significance.

Staffing

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 had a number of watches. 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 had 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 were "black watch", and work a regular 40-hour week.
Career Firefighters responded to 70–80% of the incidents the NZFS attended and protected around 80% of the population.
Career firefighters numbers were relatively stable with low turnover. The Fire Service usually recruited twice-yearly, and received up to 700 applications for just 48 positions on each intake, making competition high and job prospects poor compared to other industries. Initial training for career firefighters was done on an intensive 12-week residential course at the national training centre in Rotorua that covered not only traditional firefighting subjects but others required of a modern professional Fire and Rescue Service. Topics such as; urban search and rescue, motor vehicle extrication and hazardous materials.
Career firefighters provided the NZFS personnel that staff the nations specialised USAR Response teams. Additional specialised training was provided for these personnel, however all paid career firefighters were trained to a baseline USAR 'Responder' level.

Volunteers

Career firefighters made up only 20 percent of the New Zealand Fire Service's firefighting manpower; the remaining 80 percent of firefighters were volunteers, who received no payment for their time or labour. The 8,300 volunteer firefighters belonged to the 360 volunteer fire brigades, mainly serving small towns, communities and outer suburbs which career stations did not cover, and responded to 20–30% of all incidents the New Zealand Fire Service attended.
Volunteer firefighters had diverse backgrounds; around 14 percent were women, compared to just 2.8 percent in the career ranks. Volunteers were on-call; when an emergency call came through, firefighters were alerted through pagers and in many small regional towns, a siren atop the fire station.
The minimum age to become a volunteer firefighter in the New Zealand Fire Service was 16, although those under 18 required parental consent. Initial training was done within the local volunteer fire brigade at their weekly training nights and culminated in a seven-day residential recruit course, normally held at the National Training Centre in Rotorua or the Woolston Training Centre in Christchurch. Training included hose drills, ladder drills, portable pumps, and breathing apparatus use, which was carried out in BATB and RFTB simulators. The BATB is a gas-fired training facility and the RFTB is a live fire scenario.

Fire Police and Operational Support

The NZFS also engaged volunteers in non-firefighting roles, to provide support in a non-firefighting capacity at emergency incidents. These were variously engaged as Fire Police or as Operational Support . Volunteers engaged as Fire Police or Operational Support were classed as operational personnel but were not trained or medically cleared to wear breathing apparatus; they were ranked similarly to operational firefighters and issued with the same uniform, but were identified on the incident ground by their distinctive blue helmet colour, and PPE optimised for visibility and poor-weather operations.
FP/OS personnel were either attached to an operational fire brigade, or established into standalone units in their own right. The largest established Volunteer Fire Brigade in New Zealand, Auckland Operational Support Unit, had a membership of 60 and in the 2015 calendar year, members responded to more than 700 incidents.
Knowing that upcoming legislative changes would repeal Section 33 of the Fire Service Act, NZFS ceased swearing new Fire Police Constables around 2011–2012 and instead converted its remaining Fire Police to Operational Support.
Fire Police and Operational Support Units were exclusively staffed by volunteers and would be deployed at emergencies to provide non-firefighting functions, usually at larger-scale incidents. Typical duties included traffic and crowd control, scene cordons and lighting, first aid, salvage, communications and logistics, and even catering.