The FENZ fleet needs upgraded, the firefighters union says. Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon
Firefighters were forced to pull out of a burning dairy in Te Awa Kairangi Lower Hutt on Tuesday when their pump broke down and their hoses lost pressure.
The fire in the Alicetown Foodmarket broke out before 7am, sending a couple and a boy fleeing from the home attached to the shop, with the help of a customer. No one was hurt.
Ian Wright, national president of the New Zealand Professional Firefighters Union, spoke to crews later. He said their story exemplified the problems Fire and Emergency (FENZ) had with its ageing fleet.
"About 20 to 30 minutes into the fire, we had two crews still inside the fire and the appliance lost all revs, which meant it wasn't pumping at the correct pressure.
"The crews had to withdraw, reconnect all the hoses to another appliance."
The fire in the house behind the dairy was controlled by this stage, but still burning.
The four firefighters' two hoses still had some water to them because mains pressure was good, being early morning on a main street.
But Wright said staying put was too risky - and the hose swap out took only 90 seconds.
"It could have been quite catastrophic.
"If something had happened to the mains supply or they were on reduced capacity in a smaller urban area, like on the [Hutt] Western hills where the water supply is not that great, then there would have been a significant problem for the firefighters inside a burning building."
The firetruck that failed was 20 years old, and while FENZ's maintenance crews did their utmost, it was increasingly hard to keep the fleet going, Wright said.
"How many trucks have broken down in the last year, two years, has been quite significant, and I hate to think how many have broken down that haven't been reported on."
RNZ has reported extensively on firetruck breakdowns for many months.
One Wellington ladder-truck had failed in tests or at jobs repeatedly, and been off the road so much, firefighters named it 'Christine' after the killer car in a Stephen King horror novel.
FENZ had a fleet management plan and a replacement strategy, but has been hampered by Covid-19 supply shortages and long order times.
It also agreed in the last round of bargaining with the union to set up a working group looking at the fleet.
FENZ district manager Nick Pyatt in a statement said firefighters were trained to manage situations like the one in the Alicetown Foodmarket.
"They were able to quickly exit the building while another vehicle in attendance took over the pumping duties."
There were half-a-dozen firetrucks at the scene.
The pump that broke down, Seaview 421, was being assessed and a replacement truck had been called in, Pyatt said. FENZ would investigate what happened.
On Tuesday, the union criticised the time it took to get to the dairy fire, because crews had to come from four to 5km away, rather than from a station 500m away that was shut in 2021. But FENZ said they responded within the target time of eight minutes.
