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THE INDEPENDENT VOICE OF MID CANTERBURY
Record fire call-outs for local crews BY ERIN TASKER
ERIN.T@THEGUARDIAN.CO.NZ
With just two days left of 2013, the Ashburton Volunteer Fire Brigade has attended a record 456 calls for the calendar year. For a brigade manned entirely by a team of 30 volunteers, that’s a massive commitment. Chief fire officer Alan Burgess said the town was unlikely to be serviced by a paid firefighting force any time soon, because it came down to more than just call-out numbers. “You hear the figure it would take $1 million to put a full time crew in,” Mr Burgess said. “And while you’ve got people willing to do it, who enjoy doing it and are able to do it, the volunteer part of the organisation will be alive and happy.” The Ashburton Volunteer Fire Brigade is one of the country’s busiest. “We’d certainly be banging on for the top five I would think,” Mr Burgess said. “Some paid stations would have less than us.”
When Mr Burgess first became a firefighter 44 years ago, he estimated they attended 120-130 call-outs a year. Since then the number of volunteers had grown from 25 to just 30. “The whole dynamic has changed, the population base has changed - the dynamics of the population have changed - the farming fraternity has changed… it’s just a whole raft of changes,” Mr Burgess said. “I think the immediate future as a volunteer brigade is looking pretty good.” The New Zealand Fire Service target is for crews like Ashburton to get a truck out of the station within five minutes of a call-out, and most of the time that was achieved, Mr Burgess said. “Sometimes it’s a little bit over that, but we are landing on site in the given time, which is about nine minutes.” This year’s call-out number are well up on last year’s total of 372. Methven and Rakaia brigades have been busy too - story P3.
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